Netanyahu will skip talks if German minister meets left-wing group: Israeli official

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lays a wreath during a ceremony marking the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem April 24, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday threatened to cancel a meeting with Germany’s foreign minister if he sits down with a left-wing rights group, an Israeli official said.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel was due to meet with “civil society” groups on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman in Berlin who declined to identify the groups.

Israeli media said Gabriel would meet with “Breaking the Silence,” a group that collects testimonies from Israeli veterans about the military’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the influence it says Israeli settlers have on the army’s actions.

The German spokeswoman had no comment on Netanyahu’s threat to cancel his meeting with Gabriel. Officials traveling with Gabriel were not immediately available for comment.

Germany in March canceled an annual meeting of German and Israeli leaders that was to take place in May amid rising frustration in Berlin with settlement activity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Gabriel is visiting the Middle East to press for a two-state solution to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian government.

Gabriel appealed to the Israeli government to continue to work for a pluralistic society and defy nationalism in a column to be published Tuesday, said the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.

“Democracy is the most difficult and at the same time best form of government because it continues to seek common ground in a never-ending dialogue, even despite very different viewpoints and positions that run contrary to peaceful coexistence,” he wrote.

In February, Netanyahu ordered the reprimand of the Belgian ambassador after Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel with representatives Breaking the Silence and B’tselem, another rights group, during his visit to the region.

Both organizations have become popular targets for right-wing politicians who accuse them of damaging Israel’s reputation abroad and putting Israeli soldiers and officials at risk of prosecution.

In 2016 Israel passed a law requiring non-government organizations that receive more than half their funding from foreign governments or bodies to provide details of their donations. The legislation was largely seen as targeting left-wing organizations such as B’tselem and Breaking the Silence and drew international criticism.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Berlin, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Israel says Assad’s forces still have several tonnes of chemical weapons

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 13, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s military said on Wednesday it believes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces still possess several tonnes of chemical weapons, issuing the assessment two weeks after a chemical attack that killed nearly 90 people in Syria.

Israel, along with many countries, blames the strike on Assad’s military. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said French intelligence services would provide proof of that in the coming days.

A senior Israeli military officer, in a briefing to Israeli reporters, said “a few tonnes of chemical weapons” remained in the hands of Assad’s forces, a military official told Reuters.

Some local media reports quoted the briefing officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Israeli military procedure, as putting the amount at up to 3 tonnes.

In a 2013 agreement brokered by Russia and the United States, Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons.

Earlier in the day, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons, a global watchdog, said sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the April 4 strike in Syria’s Idlib province.

The findings supported earlier testing by Turkish and British laboratories.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on April 6 that he was “100 percent certain” that the attack was “directly ordered and planned by Assad”. He did not elaborate on how he reached that conclusion.

Syria has repeatedly denied it was behind the attack in Khan Sheikhoun. Assad was quoted as saying last week that Syria’s military gave up all its chemical weapons in 2013 after the agreement made at the time, and would not have used them anyway.

Israel closely monitors the civil war in Syria, a northern neighbour. During the six-year conflict, Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines, carrying out occasional air strikes against what it says is the movement of weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

(This version of the article corrects sourcing in paragraph 3)

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Alison Williams)

Hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails begin hunger strike

A Palestinian protester hurls back a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during clashes following a protest in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta

GAZA/RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails began a hunger strike on Monday in response to a call by prominent prisoner Marwan Barghouti, widely seen as a possible future Palestinian president.

Palestinians termed the open-ended strike a protest against poor conditions and an Israeli policy of detention without trial that has been applied against thousands since the 1980s.

Israel said the move by the prisoners, many of whom were convicted of attacks or planning attacks against Israel, was politically motivated.

The protest was led by Barghouti, 58, a leader of the mainstream Fatah movement of the Palestine Liberation Organization, serving five life terms after being convicted of murder in the killing of Israelis in a 2000-2005 uprising.

The strike, if sustained, could present a challenge to Israel and raise tensions between the two sides as the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip approaches in June.

Israeli troops and settlers pulled out of the Gaza Strip, now run by Hamas Islamists, in 2005, but peace talks on the creation of a Palestinian state collapsed with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2014.

In an opinion piece in the New York Times on Monday, Barghouti said a strike was the only way to gain concessions after other options had failed.

“Through our hunger strike, we seek an end to these abuses … Palestinian prisoners and detainees have suffered from torture, inhumane and degrading treatment and medical negligence. Some have been killed while in detention,” he wrote.

Israeli and Palestinian media reports said Barghouti had been moved from the prison where he was being held in central Israel to another in the north and was isolated from other prisoners. The Prisons Service did not initially comment on his status.

FIELD HOSPITAL

Israel denies Palestinian inmates are mistreated, and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the Barghouti-led protest was “prompted by internal Palestinian politics and therefore includes unreasonable demands”.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “The Palestinian prisoners are not political prisoners. They are convicted terrorists and murderers. They were brought to justice and are treated properly under international law.”

Palestinian officials said some 1,500 inmates affiliated with all political factions including rival Fatah and Hamas were taking part in the protest. An Israel Prisons Service spokesman said some 1,100 inmates at eight jails had joined the strike.

Almost 6,500 Palestinians are being held in 22 Israeli prisons, said Qadoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club that advocates on behalf of the inmates.

The Prisoners’ Club said a main demand was for Israel to halt detention without trial for some 500 Palestinians currently being held, and for an end to solitary confinement.

The strikers also want better medical treatment and that disabled inmates or those suffering chronic illness be freed, access to more television channels and more phone contact with relatives and more family visits.

The strike prompted a large rally in Gaza and a protest broke out near the occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem where Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli forces.

Palestinians consider brethren held in Israeli jails as national heroes. Long-term mass hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners are rare, but in past cases of individual inmates who stopped eating for weeks, detention terms were shortened or not renewed after they were hospitalized in critical condition.

Erdan said a field hospital would be erected next to one prison – an apparent move to pre-empt transfers to civilian medical facilities, which could draw wider media attention.

Abbas, 82, said in a statement that efforts would continue to secure prisoners’ freedom. He condemned what he called Israel’s intransigence in the face of “fair” prisoner demands.

(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Ori Lewis, Jeffrey Heller and Alison Williams)

Palestinian fatally stabs British woman on Jerusalem train: Israeli police

Israeli policemen block a road where the light train passes following a stabbing attack just outside Jerusalem's Old City, according to Israeli police April 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian man fatally stabbed a British woman on Jerusalem’s transit network on Friday, Israeli police said, as Christians marked Good Friday and Muslims held prayers at respective holy sites nearby.

The incident occurred in a train carriage on the light rail network near Jerusalem’s municipality building and the walled Old City. TV footage showed blood on the floor of the carriage with police officers restraining a man and carrying him away.

Israeli police said the victim was a 25-year-old British national, though it was initially unclear whether she also held Israeli citizenship.

The Shin Bet domestic security service identified the assailant as 57-year-old Jamil Tamimi and said he was a Palestinian from Arab East Jerusalem with mental health problems who was convicted in 2011 for sexually assaulting his daughter.

“This is one of many instances where a Palestinian suffering personal strife … chooses to carry out an attack in order to find release for his problems,” the Shin Bet statement said.

It added that the assailant had previously tried to commit suicide by attempting to swallow a razor blade.

Friday is sometimes a day of heightened tensions in Jerusalem’s Old City when tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers come to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

On Good Friday each year, Christians hold a procession along the Via Dolorosa in the Old City, retracing what they believe was the route that Jesus took to his crucifixion.

A wave of street attacks by Palestinians in Israel, Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank since October 2015 has previously killed 37 Israelis and two American tourists. At least 242 Palestinians have died during the period of sporadic violence.

Israel says at least 162 of the Palestinians killed had launched stabbing, shooting or car ramming attacks. Others died during clashes and protests.

Israel has accused the Palestinian leadership of inciting the violence. The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies incitement and charges that in many cases, Israel has used excessive force in thwarting attackers armed with rudimentary weapons.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Israeli cabinet minister welcomes Spicer’s apology over Hitler remarks

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer apologizes during an interview for saying Adolf Hitler did not use chemical weapons, at the White House in Washington,

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A senior member of Israel’s government welcomed on Wednesday White House spokesman Sean Spicer’s apology for saying Adolf Hitler did not use chemical weapons, comments that overlooked the killing of millions of Jews in Nazi gas chambers.

“Since he apologized and retracted his remarks, as far as (I) am concerned, the matter is over,” Intelligence and Transport Minister Israel Katz said in a statement, citing the “tremendous importance of historical truth and remembrance” of the victims of the Holocaust.

Spicer made the assertion at a daily news briefing, during a discussion about the April 4 chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed 87 people. Washington has blamed the attack on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said when asked about Russia’s alliance with the Syrian government.

The Nazis murdered six million Jews during World War Two. Many Jews as well as others were killed in gas chambers in European concentration camps.

When a reporter asked Spicer if he wanted to clarify his comments, he said: “I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.”

Later on Tuesday, Spicer apologized and said he should not have made that comparison.

“It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it and I won’t do it again,” Spicer told CNN in an interview. “It was inappropriate and insensitive.”

Spicer’s assertion, made during the Jewish holiday of Passover, sparked instant outrage on social media and from some Holocaust memorial groups who accused him of minimizing Hitler’s crimes.

Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, had tweeted late on Tuesday that Spicer’s comments at the news briefing were “grave and outrageous”, and he said the White House spokesman should apologize or resign.

There was no immediate comment from other Israeli leaders, during a Passover holiday period when government business is largely at a standstill and many in the country are on vacation.

It was not the first time the White House has had to answer questions about the Holocaust. Critics in January noted the administration’s statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which omitted any mention of Jewish victims.

At the time, Spicer defended that statement by saying it had been written in part by a Jewish staff member whose family members had survived the Holocaust.

Despite these difficulties, relations between Trump administration and the Israeli government have been more cordial than under the Obama presidency, although differences remain over the scope of Israeli settlement-building.

(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Steve Holland and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Israel bans Passover holiday exodus to Egypt’s Sinai, citing attack threats

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel took the unusual step on Monday of barring its citizens from crossing into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, saying the threat of attacks in the area inspired by Islamic State and other jihadi groups was high.

Minutes after the ban was announced, the Israeli military said a rocket was launched from the Sinai and struck southern Israel, causing no injuries.

The ban will be in effect at the Taba crossing at least until April 18, the end of the Jewish holiday of Passover that begins at sundown on Monday, said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Thousands of Israelis usually cross the land border with Egypt during the holiday to visit resorts and beaches on the Sinai Red Sea coast.

Egypt declared a three-month state of emergency on Sunday after bombings of Coptic churches in Alexandria and the Nile delta city of Tanta which killed more than 40 people. Islamic State claimed responsibility for both incidents and warned of future attacks.

In the thinly populated Sinai, an Islamist insurgency has gained pace since Egypt’s military toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, and militants have carried out deadly cross-border attacks on Israel in recent years.

Militants in the Sinai aim, the statement said, “to carry out terrorist attacks against tourists in the Sinai, including Israelis, in the immediate future”.

The statement urged Israelis already in the Sinai to return home immediately, reiterating a travel advisory that Israel’s Anti-Terrorism Directorate issued on March 27.

Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Andrew Roche)

Israeli soldier killed in Palestinian car ramming in West Bank: army

Israeli forces inspect the scene of a Palestinian car ramming attack near the Jewish settlement of Ofra near the West Bank city of Ramallah April 6, 2017. REUTERS/ Ammar Awad

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli military said a car driven by a Palestinian deliberately rammed two Israeli soldiers, killing one and injuring the other, in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

The death brings to 39 the number of Israelis killed in a wave of Palestinian street attacks that began in October 2015, while at least 242 Palestinians have been killed in Israel and the Palestinian Territories over the past 18 months.

The driver was detained after the incident near the Jewish settlement of Ofra, the army said in a statement. Witnesses told Israeli media that as he approached a bus stop, he accelerated and directed the vehicle at two soldiers waiting there.

Israeli government development of settlements in the West Bank has been a focus of friction with Palestinians and contributed to the breakdown of peace talks. Israel disputes the view that the settlements are illegal, and argues it has biblical and historical ties to the land.

Israel says at least 162 of the Palestinians killed had launched stabbing, shooting or ramming attacks. Others died during clashes and protests.

Israel has accused the Palestinian leadership of inciting the violence. The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, denies incitement and charges that in many cases, Israel has used excessive force in thwarting attackers armed with rudimentary weapons.

Photos from the scene of Thursday’s incident showed the driver, bound, blindfolded and guarded by a soldier, seated next to his damaged car, in the undergrowth behind the bus stop. The vehicle had Palestinian license plates.

Five days ago, Israeli paramilitary police officers shot dead a Palestinian after he stabbed three Israelis in Jerusalem’s Old City.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Ralph Boulton; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

EU ambassador denounces Israel’s West Bank demolitions policy

FILE PHOTO: Dwellings belongings to Bedouin are seen in al-Khan al-Ahmar village near the West Bank city of Jericho February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The European Union has expressed frustration with Israel over its demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, with the EU ambassador taking the unusual step of reading out a joint statement denouncing the practice.

At a meeting last week with the Israeli foreign ministry’s newly appointed director-general, the ambassador delivered a stern diplomatic message, saying Israel was failing in its international legal obligations and needed to change policy.

The issue came to a head after Israel issued demolition orders last month against 42 homes in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem, where EU member states Belgium and Italy have funded a school and helped build structures for the local population of around 150.

“The practice of enforcement measures such as forced transfers, evictions, demolitions and confiscations of homes and humanitarian assets (including EU-funded) and the obstruction of delivery of humanitarian assistance are contrary to Israel’s obligations under international law,” ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen said, with envoys from all EU member states present.

“We therefore call on Israel, as the occupying power, to meet its obligations vis-à-vis the Palestinian population…, completely stop these demolitions and confiscations and allow full access of humanitarian assistance.”

Faaborg-Andersen’s intervention was first reported by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment on the substance of the statement, known in diplomatic parlance as a demarche, but said it was delivered at a “get to know you” meeting with the ministry’s director-general.

The clampdown against Khan al-Ahmar, located in a sensitive area of the West Bank that Israel has earmarked for settlement expansion, is the latest in a series of demolitions that have been roundly condemned by the EU and the United Nations.

Israel says the demolitions are necessary because the building was carried out without a permit in an area of the West Bank, known as Area C, where Israel retains full control. Area C makes up 60 percent of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for their own state together with Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The EU says Israel rarely issues permits in Area C and is concerned that by blocking Palestinian development there, and demolishing structures that are built, it is actively undermining the viability of any future Palestinian state.

Figures from the United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs show that Israel has sharply stepped up demolitions in Area C over the past year.

While between 450 and 560 Palestinian structures were demolished each year from 2012-2015, the number jumped to 876 in 2016, and in January this year alone there were 121 demolitions. More than 1,200 people were displaced last year.

To underscore concern about the threat to Khan al-Ahmar, delegations from EU embassies have been visiting the site regularly. Officials hope public diplomacy might help secure an Israeli Supreme Court injunction against the demolitions.

That worked with an earlier demolition order targeting the Palestinian village of Susiya, in the southern West Bank.

“We’re not giving up,” said one EU diplomat, while acknowledging that it was an uphill battle to stop the demolitions. “We have to be realistic.”

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Stephen Powell)

As Israeli settlement growth slows, some drift away

The West Bank Jewish settlement of Ofra is photographed as seen from the Jewish settler outpost of Amona in the occupied West Bank, October 20, 2016. The Palestinian village of Silwad is seen in the background.

By Maayan Lubell

BEITAR ILLIT, West Bank (Reuters) – After five years, Batsheva Reback couldn’t take living in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank any longer.

Despite renting a house with a garden for far less than it would cost in Israel itself, it didn’t make sense. Her new apartment in Israel may be small, but unlike where she used to live it has a supermarket and a clinic nearby, it’s a quicker commute to work and she feels her children are safer.

“It’s easier to get things done,” said the 26-year-old kindergarten assistant, adding that the decision was not based on expedience alone. “I started feeling uncomfortable living in a settlement. Personally, I don’t think building more and more settlements is going to help bring peace.”

To the world, the narrative on settlements often reads one way: more of them being built, with more settlers moving in. But there are cracks in the picture, and signs Reback’s perspective is not uncommon – settlers are getting fed up.

Statistics show the population continues to rise, having now reached around 400,000 in the West Bank and 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

But behind the figures lies a different story. Although the population may have risen by nearly two-thirds in the past decade, the rate of increase has slowed sharply, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

A decade ago, for every 1,000 settlers already living in occupied territory, 20 more arrived each year. Now the expansion rate is just six per 1,000.

“The settlement enterprise is waning and what is left is being artificially kept alive by the government pouring money in,” said Shaul Arieli, an analyst at the Economic Cooperation Foundation, a think-tank that advocates for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since capturing the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, successive Israeli governments have helped establish more than 120 settlements, spending billions of dollars to build tens of thousand of homes and the infrastructure to support them: roads, electricity, gas, water and communications.

There are scores more informal settler outposts, some of which have also received government funding.

While Israel’s right-wing government is in talks with the Trump administration about limiting expansion, it has also promised to build thousands more units this year to accommodate what it calls “natural growth” – families having more children.

Yet while population growth in the settlements is higher than the national average, its rate is also falling: In 1995, it stood at 10 percent. By 2015, it had dropped to 4 percent.

Leaders of the settler movement acknowledge the decline but say it does not reflect falling popularity. While the downturn is a concern, they say it stems from government curbs on construction: people aren’t moving to the settlements because there aren’t enough homes to house them.

“The pioneering settlement spirit, the desire to return to those places where the people of Israel have always been, is just getting stronger,” said Yigal Dilmoni, deputy head of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ main representative body.

That is what concerns the international community, which views settlements on occupied land as a breach of international law and an obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, who seek a state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Israel disputes the view that the settlements are illegal, and argues that it has biblical and historical ties to the land. Some right-wing members of the Israeli government want to annex up to 60 percent of the West Bank and massively ramp up the settlement enterprise.

AFFORDABILITY

Palestinians see any expansion of settlements as part of an Israeli project to deny them a state.

“They are building settlements at a rate of construction that is politically motivated,” Xavier Abu Eid, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s Negotiations Affairs Department. “Settlements and the incentives given to settlers are part of the Israeli government’s agenda. The two-state solution is clearly not.”

Settlement population growth is now largely driven by a handful of settlements built for the ultra-Orthodox community, whose families on average have six children.

Over the past two decades, the two main ultra-orthodox settlements, Beitar Illit and Modiin Illit, have grown from comprising about 10 percent of the West Bank settler population to making up nearly a third of it.

Unlike many of the hardline, ideological settlements deep in the West Bank, Beitar Illit and Modiin Illit are adjacent to Israel and would probably be incorporated in any peace deal with the Palestinians. Their cramped apartment blocs stand in stark contrast to the red-roofed, spacious houses with gardens that identify most settlements built on West Bank hilltops.

Ultra-Orthodox residents say they moved here because it’s cheap. The conflict with the Palestinians and settling the land are not on their minds. Any place that enables their often poor and close-knit community to live together is fine.

“Politically I’m not bothered. All those global considerations are not something the average ultra-Orthodox family can afford,” said 37-year-old Motti Hizkiyahu, standing outside a discount store in Modiin Illit.

GETTING OUT

While the rate of people moving to settlements and the growth within them has tapered, there are also signs of a generational shift in some of the most established, ideological settlements that spearheaded the movement in the 1970s.

Itzik Fleger, a real-estate agent in Beit-El settlement, said the founding generation is beginning to get older, their children have grown up and some have moved away.

It took Ruchi Avital two years of deliberations until she left the settlement of Ofra, her home of 30 years, to be closer to her children, all of whom moved out of the West Bank. She is a still an ardent supporter of the settlement enterprise, but a desire to be closer to her children overrode ideology.

Pictures of her former two-storey house and garden are affixed to her refrigerator in her new Jerusalem apartment, which she said is double the price and half the size.

While Ofra has seen more people leave than arrive in recent years, Avital, 64, believes it still has a future.

“It’s reached a critical mass, it’s mature enough now that it can handle people coming and leaving,” she said, adding that a family with children had moved into her old home.

Arieli, of the Economic Cooperation Foundation, says the reality is different. While the settlements are numerous, with vast state infrastructure to support them, the enterprise is not big enough to sustain itself, he argues.

“The settlement movement has failed in creating the physical conditions for annexation,” he said, referring to the push to annex the area where nearly all settlements are located. “The two-state solution is still strong and viable.”

(Additional reporting by Lee Marzel and Luke Baker; editing by Luke Baker and Peter Graff)

U.N. chief alarmed by Israel’s approval of new settlement

U.N. Secretary general Antonio Guterres attends the 34th session of the Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, February 27, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is disappointed and alarmed by Israel’s decision to build a new settlement on land the Palestinians seek for a state and has condemned the move, his spokesman said on Friday.

Israel’s security cabinet on Thursday approved the building of the first new settlement in the occupied West Bank in two decades, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu negotiates with Washington on a possible curb of settlement activity.

“He condemns all unilateral actions that, like the present one, threaten peace and undermine the two-state solution,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

The White House appeared more accommodating to Israel’s plans for the new settlement, intended for some 40 families evicted from Amona, a West Bank outpost razed in February because it was built on private Palestinian land.

A White House official noted Netanyahu had made a commitment to the Amona settlers before U.S. President Donald Trump and the Israeli leader agreed to work on limiting settlement activity.

Trump, who had been widely seen in Israel as sympathetic toward settlements, appeared to surprise Netanyahu during a White House visit last month, when he urged him to “hold back on settlements for a little bit.”

The two then agreed that their aides would try to work out a compromise on how much Israel can build and where.

“The Israeli government has made clear that Israel’s intent is to adopt a policy regarding settlement activity that takes President Trump’s concerns into consideration,” a written statement from the official said.

Following Thursday’s announcement, Israeli officials said Netanyahu’s security cabinet decided out of respect for Trump’s peace efforts to limit construction in settlements to existing, built-up areas and not to expand beyond present boundaries.

The White House was informed in advance about the planned announcement of a new settlement as well as the Israeli policy shift and raised no objections, a person close to the matter said, signaling possible coordination between the two governments.

U.S. and Israeli officials completed a round of talks on the settlements last week without agreement, saying the discussions were ongoing, and the two sides have yet to announce any final understanding on the issue.

Trump’s Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, this week wrapped up a second trip to the region aimed at reviving peace talks that collapsed in 2014.

Palestinians want the West Bank and East Jerusalem for their own state, along with the Gaza Strip.

Most countries view Israeli settlement activity as illegal and an obstacle to peace. Israel disagrees, citing biblical and historical ties to the land it captured in the 1967 Middle East war, as well as security concerns.

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution in December that demanded a halt to settlement building, after the Obama administration decided to abstain from the vote instead of vetoing the moving.

Sweden’s U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog, a member of the Security Council, said on Friday that the 15-member Security Council should respond to the latest announcement by Israel on settlements.

“The urgency of the situation and the deterioration on the ground might call for some sort of Security Council action, although we know that finding unity on this is not easy,” he told reporters.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum)