The clash continues between Jerusalem and Washington over Israel’s construction plans in the West Bank for residents who will be evicted from the Settlement of Amona. Israeli media quoted a senior American official saying that Israel’s response to the American condemnation of the government’s decision to build new housing units near the settlement Shvut Rachel, in which they claimed that “it is not a new settlement,” was disingenuous.
The American official stressed that the sharply-worded comment by the US State Department was made after a long period of American condemnations of Israel’s settlement policy that led nowhere, and that US officials felt that Israel did not believe in the two-state solution.
The Prime Minister’s Bureau has still declined to comment on the American condemnation of