JERUSALEM — Under pressure from the United States, Israel has delayed a bill that would connect a number of West Bank settlements to Jerusalem, officials said Sunday.
The bill aims to solidify the city’s Jewish majority, but stops short of formal annexation, making the practical implications unclear. The bill says the communities would be considered ‘‘daughter municipalities’’ of Jerusalem.
Israel’s hard-line government has been emboldened by the Trump administration’s more sympathetic approach to Israel and its settlement enterprise than that of President Barack Obama, and the draft bill is part of a series of prosettler steps the government has taken in recent months.
Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to remain in President Trump’s good graces.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoted Netanyahu as saying Israel needs to coordinate the bill with the United States.
‘‘The Americans turned to us and inquired what the bill was about. As we have been coordinating with them until now, it is worth [it to continue] talking and coordinating with them. We are working to promote and develop the settlement enterprise,’’ it quoted Netanyahu as saying at a government meeting Sunday.
Earlier Sunday, David Bitan, the Likud party’s parliamentary whip and a close Netanyahu ally, told Israeli Army Radio the vote was delayed because ‘‘there is American pressure claiming this is annexation.’’
Trump has sent an envoy, Jason Greenblatt, to attempt to breathe life into moribund peace talks, which collapsed under US tutelage in 2014. The effort so far appears to have yielded little progress.
Trump has taken a more lenient approach to the settlements than his predecessor.
While the administration has said that settlements are ‘‘not helpful’’ to advancing peace with the Palestinians, Trump’s Mideast team, headed by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, is led by people with deep ties to the settler movement.
Unlike Obama, Trump does not demand a settlement construction freeze, though he has urged restraint. Nor does he demand the establishment of a Palestinian state, breaking from two decades of US policy.
Trump has backed away from a campaign promise to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a key Israeli wish, sparking rare criticism from Israeli lawmakers.
Since Trump’s election, Israel has pushed a prosettlement agenda that has included a bill meant to legalize hundreds of settler homes built on private Palestinian land. It has approved the first new West Bank settlement in two decades and green-lighted the construction of thousands of new homes.
