Israel’s proposal to build thousands of houses for settlers in the West Bank will face “firm opposition” from the United States, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion,” Blinken said during a visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina. “And in our judgment, this only weakens — it doesn’t strengthen — Israel’s security.”
Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has been a source of friction between President Joe Biden’s team and the Israeli government in recent months, even as Biden maintains a supportive posture regarding the war against Hamas. An attack on Thursday by Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank gave the far-right wing of the Israeli government an occasion to press for new “restrictions” on the Palestinians in the region and an expansion of settlements, followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to allow Israeli officials to bring the plan forward.
“Let every terrorist plotting to harm us know that any raising of a hand against Israeli citizens will be met with a blow of death and destruction and the deepening of our eternal grip on the entire Land of Israel,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Friday.
Blinken rejected that line of thinking.
“We’re disappointed in the announcement,” he said. “It’s been long-standing U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace. They’re also inconsistent with international law.”
That statement amounted to a retraction of then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 2019 statement that the “establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.” Pompeo countered on Friday that “Israelis have a right to live” in the contested region, although United Nations resolutions have reserved the territory for inclusion in a prospective Palestinian state.
“President Biden’s decision to overturn our policy and call Israeli ‘settlements’ illegal will not further the cause of peace,” Pompeo wrote on social media. “It rewards Hamas for its brutal attacks on October 7th and punishes Israel instead. These Israeli communities are not standing in the way of peace; militant Palestinian terrorism is.”
Smotrich is one of two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition, excluded from his war Cabinet but still permitted to run the portfolios they received in the power-sharing agreement that brought him back to power in 2022.
“This is a long-standing tactic of the Israelis expressing defiance in the face of attacks on settlements,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Vice President Jonathan Schanzer told the Washington Examiner. “This was a message from the government to the Israeli right wing, and settlers, saying, ‘We’re not going to let these people force us to cower and we are therefore making this announcement.’ The announcement does not lead inexorably to the building of settlements.”
That messaging takes on greater significance in the context of protracted negotiations over a possible deal for the release of Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7 rampage that ignited the war. Such a deal likely would include the release of Palestinian prisoners, as well as at least a temporary ceasefire in Gaza — a complex constellation of provisions that could set the stage for a new phase of the war, albeit one fraught with domestic and international cross-pressures.
“The release of violent prisoners is something that [Smotrich and his allies] are opposed to, and so, yeah, it would potentially trigger some tension within the government; it could even trigger a collapse of the government,” Schanzer said. “[Netanyahu], as always, is triangulating between security needs, his own political fortunes, and pressure from the U.S. and beyond.”
Netanyahu’s military strategy has drawn criticism from the families of hostages who fault him for a lack of effort in securing the release of their relatives. Hamas initially attempted to use the hostages as leverage to compel Israeli leaders to agree to a permanent halt to the military campaign, but they released dozens of hostages in November as part of a short-term truce, and Netanyahu’s team maintains that “strong military pressure” is essential to securing a larger deal. Netanyahu declined to send an Israeli delegation to Cairo last week for hostage negotiations, but he agreed on Thursday to send a team to Paris for talks following pressure from Israeli war Cabinet minister Benny Gantz.
“There are attempts these days to promote a new outline for the release of the hostages and initial signs that indicate the possibility of moving forward,” Gantz, a prominent Netanyahu rival who joined the government after the Oct. 7 attack, told reporters this week. “We will not stop looking for the way, and we will not miss any opportunity to bring the girls and boys home.”
Gantz has held out hope that Hamas will agree to a hostage release as part of a deal that would postpone any major Israeli operation in Rafah until after the month of Ramadan, the Islamic religious festival scheduled to begin March 10. Yet Smotrich, for instance, has pushed Netanyahu to prioritize the continued attacks against Hamas over any deal, even as Biden’s team warns Netanyahu not to mount a full-scale campaign in Rafah until Israeli strategists develop “a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support” for the Palestinian civilians who have taken refuge in the southern city.
“On the battlefield, we are facing an operation in Rafah, which will begin after the population is evacuated from the area,” Gantz said this week.
Netanyahu, in parallel to the hostage talks and the discussion of settlement expansion, circulated a “discussion” paper outlining his principles for the political and security process to follow the conflict. The plan includes his “already-in-motion project to establish a security buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Strip’s border,” according to the Times of Israel, and contemplates a crackdown on smuggling between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. It also envisions reliance on local Palestinians untainted by ties to Hamas to administer the local government.
“We’re looking for the right people to step up to the plate,” a senior Israeli official told Reuters. “But it is clear that this will take time, as no one will come forward if they think Hamas will put a bullet in their head.”
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Blinken offered a circumspect response to the airing of the plan. “I haven’t actually seen the plan, so I want to reserve judgment until we actually see the details,” he said. “There are certain basic principles that we set out many months ago that we feel are very important when it comes to Gaza’s future, including that it cannot be a platform for terrorism. There should be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. The size of Gaza’s territory should not be reduced.”
Hamas officials were more dismissive. “When it comes to the day after in the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu is presenting ideas which he knows fully well will never succeed,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told reporters in Lebanon.
