Netanyahu Promises New Homes For Illegal Amona Settlers
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured the residents of the evacuated outpost of Amona that he would honor his commitment to them to “build a new community,” hours before a meeting with an envoy of the Trump administration.
Netanyahu was scheduled to meet Thursday, for the second time this week, with Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s adviser on international relations, who has been touring Israel and the Palestinian areas since Monday to gauge attitudes to peacemaking. Netanyahu met with Greenblatt on Monday; the envoy also met this week in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as with with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Israeli military officials, Palestinian children in a West Bank refugee camp, and Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Aman.
Netanyahu reiterated his promise to build the first official new settlement in 25 years during a meeting of his Cabinet on Thursday morning.
“We are in the midst of a process of dialogue with the White House and our intention is to reach an agreed-upon policy regarding settlement construction. Agreed-upon for us, of course, not just for the American side. Naturally, this will be good for the State of Israel since we have not been in these processes for many years. To the residents of Amona, I reiterate: I gave you a promise to build a new community and I will honor that commitment,” the prime minister said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO