It is a pipe dream for Israel to imagine that US President Joe Biden would drop his long-standing opposition to Israeli settlement activity in exchange for the mere approval of 863 Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank.
"I have been on record, from very early on, opposed to the settlements," Biden said during the presidential campaign in 2019, describing the stance he has held throughout his long political career in Washington, which began in 1973.
At the time, six years after the end of the Six Day War, the movement to build Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria was still in its infancy.
But Biden's almost 50-year-opposition hasn't stopped Prime Minister Naftali Bennett from attempting to find a formula to make settlement building palatable to the US, as he prepares to push forward Wednesday with his first significant advance of such construction projects since taking office in May.
Biden is not the only president to hold an anti-settlement stance. All American presidents since 1967, save for former US President Donald Trump, have disapproved of the idea of unilateral Jewish building in Judea and Samaria.
The operative question that has faced Israeli prime ministers is how much of a crisis will settlement building generate and how can the flames of that inevitable conflict be kept at a low simmer rather than erupt into a blaze that would threaten to engulf Israeli-US ties.
At times there have even been US-Israeli understandings as to what would be tolerated. This included construction in the settlement blocs. These are high-population areas for which there was once a presumed understanding that they would be part of Israel's final sovereign borders.
One idea that was floated was to limit building to West Bank areas close to the Green Line. Then there was the possibility that construction would be confined to the built-up areas of settlements – to allow for modified development, without sanctioning an expansion of Israel's foothold in the West Bank.
The possibility of limiting settlement building to natural growth was also discussed but never implemented.
FORMER US President Barack Obama dismissed all such paradigms. He entered office in 2009 with the idea that no settlement activity was acceptable and pressured then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to impose a ten-month moratorium on all new housing starts, which ended in September 2010.
It was the most sweeping crackdown on settlement activity in the history of the movement – and the specter of another US-pressured freeze on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria has haunted the Israeli Right ever since.
Bennett, who is to the right of Netanyahu and who is the former director-general of the Yesha Council, is now formulating his own policies to fend off any Biden attempts at a freeze.
He is not in an easy position. In certain ways, Biden in his first year in office has taken a harsher line when it comes to West Bank settlements than the Obama administration did when it first came into power in 2009.
Obama initially wanted a settler building freeze as a tool to ensure that negotiations were held to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, who in 2009 had insisted for the first time that such a step was necessary for talks.
Only when that failed in 2014 did Obama push for a freeze as a basic standard of behavior needed to preserve the option for two states in the future. By then, however, he was already mid-way through his second term.
Biden, who was Obama's Vice President, has begun his entanglement with settlement activity where Obama left off, with an expectation of a permanent freeze.
As Obama did in his last years, Biden holds that a freeze is a basic standard tool to preserve the status quo, which means that there is never a moment when Israel is absolved from meeting that criteria.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price has not used the word freeze, but he has been clear in his statements that all settlement activity is unacceptable.
On Thursday, in response to Israeli intentions to advance plans for 2,223 settler homes, a State Department spokesperson echoed words Price has used in the past, calling for Israelis and Palestinians to refrain from "unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and fundamentally undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution." The spokesperson underscored that this most "certainly includes settlement activity, which will make achieving a two-state solution much more difficult."
BENNETT'S PUSH for new settlement housing this week lays to rest charges that he had been pressured by the US to impose a de facto freeze.
He is clearly seeking a go-around paradigm to reduce anticipated friction on settlement building and avoid pressure for a freeze as he prepares for his first meeting with Biden since becoming prime minister in May. The meeting is expected to take place either this month or at the end of September.
This week Bennett has been pursuing one possible paradigm: advance building for both Palestinians and Israelis in Area C, which is under IDF military and civilian control.
He is not the first right-wing leader to attempt this tactic – it's one that Netanyahu tried both during the Obama years and just prior to Biden's inauguration.
It is based on the possibility that the US and the Palestinians could forgo the idea of a settlement freeze in exchange for other incentives. To jump-start the 2013-2014 talks, for example, Netanyahu traded the release of Palestinian prisoners for the freedom to advance settlement plans. It was a paradigm that ultimately fell apart.
Separately, Netanyahu also pursued the possibility of assuaging US ire – and providing Palestinians with an incentive not to engage in terror – by making rare construction gestures to the Palestinians in Area C.
One such plan actually passed the security cabinet in 2016. It was an initiative for the Palestinian city of Kalkilya largely located in Area A, under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, that granted Palestinians the ability to expand by 14,000 apartment units into Area C. The plan was revived in 2017 under Trump but ultimately shelved due to right-wing opposition within his government and voting base.
Netanyahu returned to the quid-pro-quo idea in January of this year when he advanced plans for 780 settler homes and allowed for the passage of a plan for Palestinian housing that included 140 homes.
Bennett has now adapted that formula and enlarged it, in a pattern that is likely to be repeated in the year ahead.
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Neeman has spoken of this as a two-for-one formula by which one Palestinian home would be approved for every two Jewish ones.
To be effective with Biden, however, Bennett would likely have to expand the amount of acceptable Palestinian building well beyond the two-for-one formula.
Bennett continues to promote, as he has done this time, projects considered to be isolated settlements such as Har Bracha.
BIDEN AND Bennett's entry into office only this year means that public understanding of their settlement policy, as it will play out in their new leadership positions, is still in its infancy. It is reliant on the past history of both men – Biden to the Left and Bennett to the Right – combined with the actions they have taken on the matter.
Biden is not Trump who allowed settlement activity to move forward with hardly a murmur.
To date, however, Biden has avoided the discord of the Obama years, by choosing not to take two significant steps. First, he has expressed displeasure but has not condemned settlement activity. More significantly, he has not rescinded one of the signature Trump policy moves, which was to legitimize settlement activity by declaring that the US did not consider it to be inconsistent with international law.
It's a step that's evident when comparing the Biden administration's words on the matter with that of the Obama administration.
When White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was the State Department spokeswoman under Obama, she spoke of the illegitimacy of the settlements.
“We consider now and have always considered the settlements to be illegitimate, and we express that, of course, on a regular basis, as needed,” Psaki said.
John Kirby, another former State Department spokesman under Obama, similarly said that settlement activity is “illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace."
The Biden administration in contrast does not speak of the illegitimacy of the settlements even though it has decried them.
Still, it takes a certain chutzpah for Bennett to advance settlement building in advance of a meeting with Biden, but it also speaks to a belief that he expects US opposition but not a crisis.
Bennett has benefited here from the domestic and global emergencies that have confronted Biden from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, which has kept US attention focused elsewhere.
Unlike Obama, Biden has placed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the back burner, so Bennett has more leeway in avoiding an acute blow-up over settlement building.
ISRAEL'S DOMESTIC situation also introduces new elements into the divide with the US on settlements.
During Netanyahu's tenure, the US and the international community were the only barriers to settlement building.
Netanyahu's challenge throughout his twelve years in office was how to balance US opposition to settlement activity in Area C, with the members of his right-wing government who sought unfettered Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria.
Even Trump wanted a more restrained policy than that of the Israeli Right and on settlement building. He also pushed Israel to allow more Palestinian building in Area C, believing that half that territory could be designated for a future Palestinian state.
In contrast, Bennett is a minority voice on settlement activity within his own government, which has many members that would like to see a more constrained building policy in the West Bank and others who want a total freeze.
The entire Meretz Party, which is part of the government, has already warned that the scheduled advancement of settlement plans this week violates the coalition agreement.
Policing of Israel's settlement policy is no longer solely an American or international affair, so Biden can afford a more toned-down approach.
A Bennett-Lapid government that prizes diversity is also a better partner for Biden than a right-wing one led by Netanyahu, particularly given the antagonism toward Israel by the left-wing flank of the Democratic Party.
Biden, therefore, would have reasons of his own to support the current government and avoid a crisis over settlements.
An initial test of how the winds will blow will likely come later this week or early next week – when the US reaction to the actual advancement of the plans is measured.
Biden will of course always disavow settlement building, even if Bennett makes a larger and grander gesture to the Palestinians.
But even if the Biden administration ups its rhetoric to the level of condemnation, it's likely that at least for now, Bennett will not feel forced to enact a freeze since settlement building remains a point of friction but does not become a stumbling block in the burgeoning relationship between the two leaders.