(DEBKAfile Exclusive Report).US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Yitzhak Molcho, special adviser to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are tying up the last ends of an understanding on West Bank settlement construction between the Obama administration and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, DEBKAfile’s Washington sources disclose.
Our sources report that the understanding rests on four principles:
- 1. Israel will maintain a freeze on new settlement construction. (This week, transport minister Eliahu Atias said that all new projects for West Bank settlements have been “on hold” in the five months since Netanyahu took office.) In the next three years, the prime minister’s office and defense ministry will only grant permits for some hundreds of building projects appearing on an agreed list. A joint US-Israeli team is now working on the final list.
2. Obama will stop demanding a total freeze.
3. The two governments agreed to disagree on construction in Jerusalem, including the eastern side, which will continue uninterrupted - as will Washington’s criticism on this point.
4. The Obama administration has made it clear that any confrontation with the Netanyahu government is undesirable; relations between the White House and PMO will henceforth revert to their normal friendly level.
The two parties also agreed that the US-Israel understanding on the settlements and their limited expansion will not be published or brought before the government in Jerusalem for endorsement.
Defense minister Ehud Barak will be the only minister with full knowledge of its contents and in Washington, only Vice President Joe Biden, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Mitchell - seven individuals in all in both capitals.
Mitchell was the live wire pushing for an accord and smoothing away the obstacles and differences, according to one Washington source. It was he who prevailed on President Obama to step away from a showdown with Netanyahu.