During the drafting of a “framework document” planned by the Obama administration in 2014 for a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, Netanyahu called on the administration to insert a provision allowing for Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria to remain in place after the the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to Haaretz, which cited a working draft of the document in question as well as Israeli and US officials involved in negotiations at the time.
According to the report, the document had initially stipulated that “Any Israelis who choose to remain in place in the State of Palestine will live under Palestinian jurisdiction without discrimination and with full rights and protections.”
A US official said according to the report that American negotiators had expressed readiness to include the condition within a final draft of the document, although they intended on discussing the provision with the PA first before doing so to make sure that the PA agreed.
In any event, however, the provision was removed from future drafts of the document; senior Israeli officials said according to the report that Netanyahu himself had asked that it be removed after the idea was attacked by Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett and other ministers in Likud.
The PA has systematically stressed that any future “Palestinian state” would be free of Jews. Only last week, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh called for the establishment of an “independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital that will be empty of settlers.”