White House row-back on settlements is just the ticket for Netanyahu

Get ready for a lot of mixed messages between Washington and Jerusalem.

The Trump administration is, without doubt, the least orderly in living memory and there is still no established hierarchy on foreign policy - certainly not when it comes to the Israel-Palestine issue. No-one yet has any idea where the decisions will be made.

Will it be the State Department, where Secretary Rex Tillerson has only just arrived and has yet to appoint a team of senior diplomats? Will it be the National Security Council, where some of the President Trump's senior advisers, like Steve Bannon, are expected to hold sway over the military and intelligence professionals? Could it be son-in-law Jared Kushner and the newly appointed ambassador and family attorney David Friedman?

One immediate result of this lack of cohesion is that every Israeli who has so far been in contact with the administration has come away with whatever message they wanted to hear. The settler leaders who are close to Ambassador Friedman have been given the impression that the United States will accept an unfettered settlement drive and even annexation of parts of the West Bank.