NETANYAHU: NO NEW SETTLEMENTS.

By Dylan Matthews

This may just be an empty campaign promise, but it's encouraging nonetheless:

A Likud-led government would not build new settlements in the West Bank but would allow for natural growth, Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu told Quartet envoy Tony Blair Sunday, in an apparent attempt to calm the international community before this week's arrival of George Mitchell, the newly appointed U.S. envoy to the Middle East.

Now, "natural growth" isn't a positive development either, and just makes the inevitable eviction of settlers once a peace deal is reached more problematic. Moreover, there are political considerations that will likely prevent Bibi on preventing new settlements even if he wanted to. As Gershom Gorenberg has written for TAP, even Netanyahu is considerably more moderate than the rest of the Likud list, and his most likely coalition partners, including Yisrael Beiteinu, the National Religious Party and Shas, have ties to the settler movement. Frankly, I'd be shocked if a Likud-led government doesn't lead to both "natural growth" and new settlements. But props to Netanyahu for promising this much; now let's hope the Israeli left holds him to it once he's (presumably) in office.