Israeli minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning Israeli cabinet and Knesset members not to take any action to strengthen communities in Judea and Sumeria. Trump has warned Israel “not to surprise him”; which is the same language Obama used when pressuring Israel on Jewish settlements.

The following is an article from even the extreme left wing Haaretz site confirming what is widely being reported throughout the Israeli news media:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to torpedo a bill to annex the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, slated to come up for a vote Sunday in a ministerial panel. Haaretz has learned that Netanyahu spoke by phone Friday with Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) and asked him to postpone discussion of the bill in light of messages conveyed by advisers of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu told Bennett that Trump’s advisers said no unilateral steps should be taken by Israel before the Netanyahu-Trump meeting, scheduled to take place in the first week of February, but rather to coordinate and cooperate.

“I’m getting messages from Trump not to jump in head first,” Netanyahu told Bennett.

…

The bill to annex Ma’aleh Adumim seeks to apply Israeli law to the settlement, located about 7 kilometers east of Jerusalem, including the controversial area E-1, which was added to Ma’aleh Adumim’s municipal boundaries. The sponsor of the bill, MK Yoav Kish (Likud) told Haaretz that he is willing to compromise and leave E-1 out of the bill. “I don’t want anyone to say that because sovereignty was applied to E-1 as well, he doesn’t want to join the process.”

E-1 is an area of 12 square kilometers that extends north and west of Ma’aleh Adumim.

Construction in area E1, according to international critics, will cut the northern and southern West Bank from each other.

Kish added: “80 percent of the public supports applying sovereignty to Ma’aleh Adumim. At this point we will leave it to the committee discussing the bill in the Knesset to determine the boundaries of sovereignty. Authority might eventually be given to the interior minister. We don’t specifically mention E1 in the bill, and that is intentional.”