Yesha Council chairman denounces ‘gross interference in internal Israeli affairs’ after Biden sends private message to stop building.
By David Elhayani, Arutz Sheva Staff , Oct 06 , 2021
The Biden Administration sent a quiet message to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office requesting that new construction be curbed in Jewish localities in Judea and Samaria.
According to a report by Barak Ravid on the Walla news site, the issue of construction in Judea and Samaria has the potential to become a hotbed for tension between Israel and the United States, but both the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office want to avoid this and are trying to reach understandings through quiet channels.
US chargé d’affaires in Jerusalem Michael Ratney called senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office last week and said the Biden administration would like to see restraint or reduction in new planning and construction in the settlements. Ratney also expressed concern over Israeli construction in the strategically important E1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim.
According to the report, in the six weeks since Bennett returned from Washington, no date has been set for the convening of the Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council to approve the promotion of construction plans in the settlements. A senior Israeli official said that “there is a great deal of sensitivity at the moment with the Americans when it comes to settlements. That is why the promotion of new construction is delayed.”
Yesha Council chairman David Elhayani responded to the report and said: “The Biden Administration should not interfere in the internal affairs of the State of Israel. President Biden knows that damage to settlement building in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley means the fall of the current government.”
Elhayani stressed: “We will not tolerate this gross American intervention, and we will not give up on the continuation of construction as it has been in recent years. We expect Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to reject this demand outright.”
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked ruled out talks on Palestinian statehood, both during Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s term, as well as after Yair Lapid rotates in as premier.
Speaking with the UAE-based news outlet The National, Shaked said that “he Israeli government won’t deliberate on the establishment of a Palestinian state under the present government of Bennett or Lapid when he comes into office under the rotational agreement.”
“There is a consensus among the parties [in the government] not to get involved in the issue, which could cause an internal rift.”
“We believe in economic peace as a means of improving Palestinians lives and to create cooperative industrial zones. But not a state with an army, absolutely not.”
Shaked pushed back on the description of Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria as being “illegal settlements,” calling the area “disputed territory”.
The Interior Minister also slammed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as “hypocritical”.
“They’re anti-Semitic by opposing Israel’s right to exist. BDS is the new form of anti-Semitism.”
Biden’s approval rating is down to 38% which makes him even weaker.
Quinnipiac Poll Finds Biden’s
Job Approval Plummeting to 38%
We are hearing again from those who do not recognize Judea and Samaria as the ancestral and Biblical heartland of the Jewish people. This is the precious G-d given land that our ancestor Joshua Bin Nun first liberated when our people entered the Promised Land.
A truly Jewish and Zionist Israeli government must not brook any pressure upon it as that exerted now by Pres. Biden and his Marxist handlers. They have no right to deny the Jewish state to both fully settle and build anywhere within its ancestral heartland.
Judea and Samaria and all the land from the River to the Sea, including Gaza, belongs to only one people – the Jewish people. Period.
But so does the Golan – and Gilead in north western Jordan..- both became the possession of the Biblical tribe of Manasseh. Even more, much of the land east of the Jordan River became the possession of the tribes of Gad and Reuben.
I use the logged in name – whereamI – because I find it so alien to witness any leadership of the reconstituted Jewish state submitting to such outrageous non-Jewish foreign pressure. Indeed it is bad enough to witness Israeli leftists who are such a misfortune to the Jewish state, but why are so many Israeli politicians acting as ‘trembling Israelites.’ Bennet, Lapid and Gantz are a cause of dismay.
No people other than the Jewish people have any right to claim even one centimeter of the Jewish homeland, especially not those fraudulent Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
I have been in Area C and seen for myself how Israeli governments have shamefully abandoned so much Jewish ancestral land to the Arab thieves. It is time to reverse that theft and to finally liberate all of Judea and Samaria
I am in full agreement with Ted Belman and what is called the Jordan Option. It is time to institute a true, and historically just Two-State-solution between only two nation states – Israel and Jordan. It is time to end the 100 year old betrayal of the Jewish people in their homeland by a hostile world.
I agree with Dr. Sherman’s idea to incentivize financially hostile Arabs to live among their fellow Arabs who call themselves Palestinians within Jordan or anyehere else.
If the dominate Palestinian Arab population in Jordan wish to rename it Palestine then so be it. After all, that will be the historically just conclusion of the 100 year old original Two-State- solution.
Michael, you are correct at least on one thing that I am extremely critical of Biden.
Beyond, that I hope you are incorrect.
So far Bennett has directly told Biden that he intends to continue building the current Jewish towns in Judea/Samaria with “natural growth”.
A test will be a project in E1 (extension of Mallah Adumium near Jerusalem) that has a plan to build 3000 units. This is actually an expansion and vital to Israel controlling the area.
Klein, you have a lot of criticism here for Joe Biden. Time will tell, and I don’t think we’ll have to wait long to see this.
Mark my words: BENNET WILL BEND OVER BACKWARDS TO PLEASE BIDEN.
Joe Biden has been fingered by the former US National Security Chief, as the greatest threat to the security of America. At least in the US, people are resisting him. The angels will do cartwheels, when the Israeli Jews do the same.
Not enough Biden is trying to apply a radical socialist/Marxist agenda to the USA!
Now he thinks he is smart to enough to tell Israel what it should or should not do.
Israel needs to tell Biden thanks for the concern and we will take it under advisement. Israel should just keep building In Judea/Samaria.