The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly shocked at the Obama administration’s stance on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Bush administration simply called settlement expansion “unhelpful”, while privately giving a nod and a wink to what the Israelis like to call “natural growth”, but Mr Obama has demanded a complete freeze.
When Israeli officials meet the Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Monday they will claim that secret understandings between Mr Bush and the former prime minister Ariel Sharon allowed for this “natural growth”. But not only has Mr Obama publicly rejected it, it is expressly ruled out in Mr Bush’s 2002 “Roadmap”.
Continued settlement activity is a cornerstone of Mr Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, which includes strong settler representation (including the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman). Even the ostensibly dovish Labor Party supports “natural growth”.
But Washington has made stopping all settlement construction a cornerstone of its own Middle East peace policy, which means that Mr Netanyahu’s plans to build in the corridor known as “E1” to link the Maale Adumim settlement bloc with Jerusalem, as well as construction plans on the Arab side of the Holy City, will put Israel into confrontation with its most important ally.
