Netanyahu postpones meeting on controversial settlement plan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to postpone a meeting on a settlement plan that divides the occupied West Bank into two parts.

The meeting was scheduled next week and was slated to discuss the highly controversial settlement plan in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank.

For more than 20 decades, several Democratic and Republican US administrations have pressed Israel not to build a settlement in the area between occupied Jerusalem and the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank.

Building an Israeli settlement in this area would separate the occupied West Bank from the occupied holy city of Jerusalem, thus preventing Palestinian territorial contiguity and would make it much harder to establish a Palestinian state in the future.

Axios reported that the decision, which angers the Jewish settlers, comes as Netanyahu appears to be trying to de-escalate tensions with the Biden administration with the hope it will lead to getting an invitation for a meeting with the US president in the White House.

In March, President Biden said that Netanyahu would not be getting an invitation to the White House “in the near term.”

Recently, the Biden administration and several EU countries have expressed concern to Netanyahu and his aides about the intention to hold a meeting about the E1 plan and asked for it to be canceled, Axios said.

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