Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a meeting yesterday with members of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements that are situated within the internationally disputed West Bank territories. The meeting, which lasted for about two hours, focused on Israel’s aspired plan to assert Jerusalem’s sovereignty over parts of the referred to territories. It includes the Jordan Valley and about thirty percent of the Biblical districts of Judea and Samaria. It is important to explain that the Yesha Council was initially founded in the 1970s with the aim of actively promote the Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of a declared goal ‘to return the Jewish people to their ancestral Homeland.’ In light of their clear ideological parameters, the Yesha Council – which holds some political sway within the Israeli government – has voiced strong opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace initiative, as it effectively limits the further expansion of the Jewish settlements into territories which it earmarked for a future Palestinian state. Because of their vocal objection to the American-plan, yesterday’ meeting between Netanyahu and the Yesha Council was not light-hearted (to say the least). A political source told TV7 that the atmosphere intensified rapidly at certain stages of the meeting. Premier Netanyahu, who was accompanied by Israeli Parliament Speaker Yariv Lavin, reportedly excoriated the settler leaders for their public criticism of the Trump Administration’s peace initiative, and warned that the Yesha council’s “campaigns and statements against the Trump plan only damage the cause… of annexation.” And while the coalition agreement that brought about the formation of the national unity government clearly defines July 1st as the date for beginning the application of Jerusalem’s sovereignty, the Premier stopped short from providing the Yesha Council with a clear timetable of the anticipated move. Instead, Netanyahu emphasized that the pace of the progress of annexation was exclusively contingent on Washington’s position, and that in the months that have elapsed since President Trump initially presented the political section of his peace plan, “the Americans have become far more stringent.”
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The Prime Minister’s Bureau released a statement which reemphasized Netanyahu’s previously-declared commitment to hold negotiations on the basis of the Trump Administration’s peace-plan. He further insisted to the Yesha Council that the discussions with the Americans were still ongoing; and separately that an agreement was reached with the Yesha Council to continue the dialogue.