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A ROW is emerging over how quickly Israel will proceed with its illegal annexation plans in the West Bank and Jordan Valley after US envoy Jared Kushner apparently called for it to be slowed down.
Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and wrote the “Trump peace plan” rejected by Palestinians and most of the international community as a one-sided farce precluding the possibility of a viable independent Palestine.
He urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “greatly slow the process” of annexation while the US struggled to cope with the international fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and the mass protests that followed the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, according to Israeli media.
Israel’s Defence Minister Benny Gantz, who is due to succeed Mr Netanyahu after 18 months according to a power-sharing agreement, had instructed the military to begin annexing illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jordan Valley from July.
And Mr Netanyahu was also attacked by leaders of illegal settlements who attacked the Trump plan for its formal recognition of Palestine’s right to statehood and for leaving Palestinians the right to remain on land near some settlements.
The settlers’ Yesha Council chairman David Elhayani said the plan proved Mr Trump was “not a friend of Israel,” forcing Mr Netanyahu to retort that the US President had “led historic moves for Israel’s benefit” such as its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in defiance of international agreements that see East Jerusalem as the future capital of Palestine.
Parliamentary Speaker Yariv Levin added that Mr Elhayani was “rude and irresponsible” and risked damaging US-Israeli relations when Israel was advancing “the historic process of applying sovereignty” to Palestinian land.