Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday his country is likely to clinch a deal with the United States later this week over the settlement activities in the West Bank, Xinhua quoted local daily Ha'aretz as reporting.
The agreement would be finalized during the upcoming visit of U. S. President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Netanyahu was quoted as saying at a meeting with ministers from his hawkish Likud party.
Israel and the United States, its top ally, have been engaged in a flurry of talks and meetings in recent months to narrow the gaps concerning the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the settlement issue at the fore. Netanyahu and Mitchell met in London last month.
Speculation is circulating in local media that Obama would meet with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly later this month and announce the resumption of peace talks between the two Middle East neighbors.
With the clock ticking away, officials at Netanyahu's office said late last week that the prime minister intended to greenlight construction of several hundred housing units in settlements and then impose a partial suspension of settlement activities in the Palestinian territories for a few months.
A source in the Prime Minister's Office was quoted by Ha'aretz as saying that Netanyahu described the proposal as "reducing the scale of construction," instead of "moratorium" or "freeze."
Meanwhile, the possible slowdown reportedly would not apply to East Jerusalem, a section of the holy city that the Palestinians want to be the capital of their future state, and the some 2,500 housing units already under construction.
Such a move is widely seen as a balancing maneuver by Netanyahu, who is caught between a rock and a hard place, with his right-wing allies opposing any construction freeze in the West Bank and the Obama administration pressing for a total freeze in a bid to resume the long stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
With the go-ahead from the prime minister, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is expected to authorize the building of 450 to 500 housing units in West Bank settlements overnight, according to local news service Ynet. These houses would also be exempt from the projected suspension.
The new construction plans drew swift criticism from the United States, and the European Union, both of which have been leading the international community in urging the Jewish state to completely stop construction in the Palestinian territories.
While condemning Israel's continued construction, the Palestinian side on Sunday stressed that they will not return to the negotiating table before Israel freezes settlement construction.
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