Netanyahu quietly curbing settlement expansion: reports

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Yahoo News / Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has quietly curbed new building projects in Jewish settlements, an Israeli watchdog group and media reports said on Tuesday, in an apparent bid to help U.S. efforts to revive peace talks with the Palestinians.

"We see there are fewer approvals for new construction in the West Bank since President Barack Obama visited (in March)," Yariv Oppenheimer, head of Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, told Reuters. He said it was too early to give any numbers.

Israeli Army Radio reported that Netanyahu had met Housing Minister Uri Ariel to order a freeze in issuing tenders for new housing projects in settlements in the West Bank, effectively delaying construction of hundreds of homes.

The Haaretz newspaper, quoting unidentified senior officials, said Netanyahu had promised U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he would refrain until mid-June from publishing new tenders in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East w

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-quietly-curbing-settlement-expansion-reports-090713539.html

[Steviehh]

1. Too little, too late

[JDPriestly]

3. You mean because the Palestinians haven't responded yet and it's almost June?

I'm waiting for the Palestinians to acknowledge the change. Do you think they will respond enough and on time?

Looks to me like the Israelis are making a first move toward peace. Where is the complimentary move by Palestinians?

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Netanyahu's passive lack of endorsing new settlement expansion makes no difference.

Until he sends the military to both stop independent settlers from evicting Palestinians, burning down their olive trees, poisoning their wells, destroying their homes, and building on land they don't own and even force the settlers from homes built illegally, it means nothing.

[Sunlei]

4. Mr. Netanyahu, please swap out more of the land traditional farmers are so upset about.

It's not that large an area, the settlers are few and nothing major is buildup. Dry desert land, it has been traditional Pal. farmland for hundreds of years.

Swap the land and move the settlers trailer park somewhere else. The farmers to have to suffer abuse from the tiny groups of settlers and your military- to try to farm.

Keep up the land swaps.

By the way I hope those new homes, hundreds, thousands of morgages, aren't creating a 'housing bubble' by your banks. Guess we'll see down the road */wink*