Rumors abound that Defense Minister Ehud Barak will be proposing a 3-month continuation of the freeze on Yesha building in his talks in Washington D.C. Barak and others in the government deny that such a plan has been approved by the Netanyahu administration.
Should such a temporary agreement be instated, Netanyahu may quickly find himself mired in vocal dissent at home while, perhaps, enjoying momentary relief abroad.
The Yesha Council of settlements blasted on Monday reports that Barak was going to offer the U.S. a complete halt to construction for three months.
"These tactical tricks will in the end lead us to a strategic defeat," Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan told Army Radio.
"The time has come for the government to tell the truth - that it was elected because it believes that a Palestinian state is an existential threat to the State of Israel, that Jews have a right to settle any place in the Land of Israel and to build, not only for natural growth."
Difficult to evaluate Netanyahu's intentionts at this point when, on the one hand, hundreds of apartments in high-rise building projects in Mod'in Ilit have been halted but 2000 other homes being constructed in Yesha in places like the fast-growing Givat Zev and Maale Adumim are not included in any discussion of acquiesance to the Obama demands.
Foggy as Netanyahu's plans may be regarding overall building in Yesha, he has been clear in his insistence that many contracts already signed with builders will be honored.
Obama, like a willful child, has dug his heels in concerning building in Yesha, in the face of acknowledgement of all participants in the Bush agreements with Israel as to the existence of such agreements and in spite of the disastrous weakness of his response to events in Iran (or perhaps because of it).
Netanyahu can be seen actively searching for a way to both give Obama a hand down from the tall tree he has climbed and refrain from betraying his own party's platform, on which it was elected by a constituency nodding at its acceptance of the fact that the acquiesance in Gush Katif was a disaster.
