Mr. Shaman
Seer
October 5, 2016 - "The Obama administration on Wednesday castigated the Israeli government for approving plans to create a new Jewish settlement on the West Bank, three weeks after it signed a lucrative military aid package with the United States and a week after President Obama traveled to Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres.
In an uncommonly harsh statement, the State Department “strongly condemned” the move, saying it violated Israel’s pledge not to construct new settlements and ran counter to the long-term security interests Israel was seeking to protect with the military deal.
The new settlement, one of a string of housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank, is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered to be demolished.
The timing of the approval especially infuriated the White House, American officials said, because it came after Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations. Mr. Netanyahu, they said, gave the president no advance warning, even though Mr. Obama expressed deep concerns about Israel’s continuing settlement construction. The officials declined to speak for attribution owing to the sensitivity of the issue.
The plan for a new settlement grows out of a bitter impasse between the Israeli authorities and settlers in Amona, which sits on a hilltop near the Palestinian administrative capital, Ramallah. An Israeli court has ordered the residents of Amona, which is built on private, Palestinian-owned land, to leave by Dec. 25. The government has offered to move them to the newly approved settlement, built on public land, which could accommodate up to 300 houses. But they have so far refused.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government has dealt with other such standoffs by seeking to retroactively legalize the settlements. But because Amona is built on private Palestinian land, it cannot solve the problem with legal machinations. Israeli authorities view the settlement as a “satellite” of another settlement, Shvut Rachel, which itself was retroactively legalized."