Netanyahu's fuzzy math on settlement construction

The heads of Israel’s right-wing coalition discovered last week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had secretly promised the US administration to restrict construction of additional housing units in West Bank settlements. The de facto situation in the settlements reflects this pledge. Settlers, who anxiously awaited the replacement of their nemesis, former President Barack Obama, by the new Messiah, Donald Trump, have had a rude awakening over the past nine months. Trump assumed office, but the anticipated construction boom in the West Bank has not materialized. The boom may even have become a bust.

In the wake of Netanyahu’s reported pledge, one of the Likud’s leading hawks, Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and Environmental Protection Zeev Elkin, launched a rare on-the-record broadside against the Trump administration. “This administration feels comfortable changing the obligations set out by the Obama administration in the climate agreement and with many other things, but. … they are clutching at the same idea that building beyond the Green Line is a negative Israeli step,” Elkin said in an interview.

The wrath of the settlers and of right-wing government ministers, as expressed by Elkin’s outburst, was also directed at US objections to the renewal of the long-suspended construction of 31 settlement housing units in the Palestinian city of Hebron. Hebron, however, is not the only problem.

“US envoy Jason Greenblatt sits with the people in the Prime Minister’s Office [to debate] every brick we want to put down in the West Bank,” a senior Israeli minister and member of the diplomacy-defense Cabinet told Al-Monitor on the condition of anonymity. “Israel never had to get advance permission for every nail someone hammers into some plank on the ground. This is not what we expected from the Trump administration.”