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Announcement comes hours after government issued permits for 1,500 settlement units, in a move panned by the Palestinians he Israeli government on Thursday ordered officials to move forward with plans for another 1,800 settler homes, just hours after issuing tenders for 1,500 housing units, an official said. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign up! “The political echelon has ordered the Civil Administration to advance 1,800 new (housing) units,” the Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to a Defense Ministry unit responsible for all West Bank planning...

The EU has threatened to take action against Jewish settlers after Israel backed the building of 1,466 more homes on Palestinian land. EU countries said in a joint communique on Thursday (5 June) that the move is “unhelpful to peace efforts” and called on Israel to “reverse the decision”. They added that if it does not comply, they will “act accordingly” and “fully and effectively implement existing legislation in relation to settlements”. …

U.S. President Barack Obama sees Israel as being responsible for the failure of the recent peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to a senior official in Washington who was quoted by the New York Times on Friday. The unnamed official told the newspaper that the president believes that Israel’s announcements of new construction in Judea and Samaria were to blame for the failure. “At every juncture, there was a settlement announcement,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “It was the thing that kept throwing a wrench in the...

US Secretary of State John Kerry apologized this week for using the term ‘Apartheid’ in describing Israel’s status following the collapse of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Nonetheless, it appears that the Obama administration is convinced that Israel is by large responsible for the impasse in the peace process and therefore slated to pay the price for it in the near future. “The Jewish people are supposed to be smart. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation,” a US official told Yediot Ahronot....

… Until he read the breaking news of President Obama’s earth-shattering interview with Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have anticipated that Monday’s meeting was going to be one of his less confrontational and unpleasant sessions of frank, allied diplomacy with his good friend Barack. […] For one thing is certain, the president’s resort to a newspaper interview on the eve of their talks to issue near-apocalyptic warnings about the disaster Netanyahu risks bringing upon Israel is just about the last thing likely to bolster the prime minister’s confidence in their alliance, and just about the...

Germany’s foreign minister says his country vigorously supports U.S.-mediated peace talks and encourages Israel to take the “difficult but necessary decisions” to make them succeed. […] Germany is Israel’s closest European ally and the two governments hold a joint Cabinet session each year. But tensions have arisen of late over Israel’s West Bank settlement policies. …

In what appears to be the worst crisis yet for the governing coalition, sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday threatened to fire Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett over his criticism of Netanyahu a day earlier. “Bennett was given a message that he has to apologize clearly and unequivocally or there will be a price to pay,” a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel. On Tuesday, Bennett delivered a speech lambasting the prime minister in the wake of a Times of Israel report according to which Netanyahu wants Jewish settlers to be...

Palestinians would kill Jewish Israelis left under their rule, Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday, continuing a campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible willingness to leave Israeli settlers under Palestinian rule under a future peace agreement. Bennett also outlined his own plan for the West Bank — which he has largely been mum about since joining Netanyahu’s government — under which Israel would annex most of the territories. “Do you know why? Why Jews cannot live under Palestinian rule? Do you know why? Why Palestinians can’t rule over Jews?” Bennett said in an address at the...

A source in the Prime Minister's Office told reporters Sunday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu believes that if a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria, Jews who wish to remain in that state should be allowed to do so. The source said that Netanyahu believes that there is no reason for the Palestinian state, netanyahu says settlers may want to remain under pa rule if it is created, to be "mono-ethnic." The source explained that the idea is a continuation of Netanyahu's statement in his speech at Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, in which he made clear that he...

Germany is conditioning research support and cooperation with Israel on the exclusion of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, AFP reported on Thursday, citing the Haaretz newspaper. According to the report, Berlin’s decision “represents a significant escalation in European measures against the settlements.” Haaretz noted that a 1986 treaty of the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development states that the foundation will only sponsor projects “within the geographic areas under the jurisdiction of the State of Israel” before the 1967 Six Day War. The Germans reportedly want to apply that clause to the “German-Israeli funding program (DIP)”,...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas warned on Friday against Israel using peace talks as a “cover” to “expand settlements” in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, AFP reported. Abbas was speaking in Morocco at a meeting of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee. The meeting comes days after Israel announced tenders for construction of more than 1,800 new homes in regions which the PA claims for a future state. The U.S.-brokered peace talks must “not serve as a cover for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories,” said Abbas, according to AFP. “There can be no peace without stability, nor...

Poor Israeli PR has seen the EU enforce new rules on science funding, but EU states compensated Israel with a UN gift. Under the funding deal, the EU and Israel will shortly sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Israel’s participation in the Union’s “Horizon 2020” research program. The grants will be governed by new EU guidelines, which say Israeli firms and institutions cannot spend a cent of EU money on activity in occupied Palestinian land. …

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his housing minister to reconsider construction plans for more than 20,000 homes in the West Bank. He said the plans, announced by Housing Minister Uri Ariel earlier on Tuesday, would create unnecessary friction with the international community. The US had earlier said it was "deeply concerned" over the Israeli plans. The Palestinians had said they would appeal to the UN, warning that Israel's move would kill off peace talks. In a statement, Mr Netanyahu said he had asked Housing Minister Uri Ariel "to reconsider" plans for potential construction of new homes for Jewish settlers...

German Chancellor Merkel Angela Merkel met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday and called on Israel to show restraint with its settlement policy so as not to jeopardize the ongoing Middle East talks. In a joint press conference with Abbas in Berlin, Merkel said a grand-coalition government in Berlin would continue to provide aid to the Palestinian Territories. “We have always advocated a two-state solution. We have always advocated aiding and supporting the Palestinian Territories, advancing the peace process, advancing economic development and I am pretty sure we will conduct our foreign policy with this continuity,” Merkel said. …

Samaria Regional Council Chairman Gershon Mesika and his deputy, Yossi Dagan, were guests at a conference on the harmful impact of the EU’s policies against West Bank settlements held Thursday in the European Parliament building in Brussels. The parliament has often been hostile on the topic of Israeli activity in the West Bank. But on Thursday, Vice Chairman of the EU Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Italian politician Fiorello Provera, held the conference to help parliamentarians better understand the issue. … “If Europe thinks Jews will return to the days where we were forced to mark our products—you can forget...

At first glance, a proposed new bill asking Israel’s parliament to extend Israeli labor law to the West Bank and protect women against unlawful dismissal seems innocuous enough. But critics say that under the guise of woman’s rights, the bill’s true intent is to further entrench Israeli control over occupied territory the Palestinians seek for their future state. The debate sheds light on the complex and distinct legal system Israel has cultivated during its 46-year control of the West Bank. Since Israel has never annexed the territory, it technically remains under military rule, creating a bewildering legal reality. …

The Palestinians might turn to U.N. bodies in response to Israeli settlement building even before their negotiations with Israel have run their course, a Palestinian spokeswoman said Wednesday, reflecting growing frustration over recent Israeli plans to promote more than 3,000 new settlement homes. If the U.S. is unable to halt Israeli construction on war-won lands, deemed illegal by most of the international community, the Palestinians may have to seek redress elsewhere, said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization. "We are saying very clearly that if Israel does not stop, then we have to move," Ashrawi said...

The Israeli-Arab conflict has nothing to do with the “settlements” and everything to do with Arab refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told United Nations head Ban Ki-moon on Friday. Netanyahu and Ban met in Jerusalem, and the Prime Minister asked Ban to look into the UNRWA summer camps in Gaza which are used to delegitimize Israel, call for its destruction and educate Palestinian Authority Arab children to carry out jihad.

An MK from Israel’s second largest party has warned that settlement-building risks cutting off Israel from the West. Ofer Shelah, a Knesset deputy from the centrist Yesh Atid party, a key member of Israel’s ruling coalition, whose leader, Yair Lapid, is the country’s new finance minister, made the statement in Hebrew on his Facebook page on Wednesday (14 August). Referring to new EU guidelines which block funding for Israeli entities which operate on Palestinian land, he said: “The price of occupation that … used to be some abstract, philosophical notion, nowadays is concrete, obvious—and unbearable.” He noted that settlement-building “will...