Alarm bells went off last week in Education Minister Naftali Bennet’s right-wing HaBayit HaYehudi party during Jason Greenblatt’s March 13-16 visit. The Israeli right expected the US president’s representative for international negotiations to be a political messiah that would greenlight for the government the continuation of its settlement policy and its de facto annexation policies in Area C.
According to a senior Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) official with direct access to Prime Minister (and Foreign Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu, Greenblatt’s rhetoric was in fact very promising. Greenblatt pushed all the right buttons and used all the right terms, including references to the “unshakable alliance” between the two countries, “a new page in the US-Israeli relationship,” “Israel’s security being of paramount interest to the United States,” “Israel the Jewish state,” etc.