US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman suggests that it may take a while before Israel can go ahead and apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and all settlements across the West Bank.

In a briefing to reporters, he stresses that an Israeli-American committee to discuss the exact parameters of the ostensible annexation must be established first before Jerusalem can go ahead with its plans.

“That committee will work with all due deliberation to get to the right spot. But it is a process that does require some effort, some understanding, some calibration. We need to see the dimensions and see that it is not inconsistent with the maps,” he says.

The agreement that we have with the prime minister is that in exchange for Israel agreeing to freeze the territory that is allocated to a Palestinian state under the vision, in exchange for accepting our plan and moving forward… form a joint committee with Israel to convert the conceptual map into a more detailed and calibrated rendering so that recognition can be immediately achieved.”

Israeli officials had been saying they would push ahead with annexation in the next few days, which both Friedman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier indicated they would be okay with if it stuck to the parameters of the plan.

But senior White House adviser Jared Kushner told CNN that the exact contours of the areas to remain under Israeli control would take two to four months to work out.

During the briefing, Friedman said that the Israeli government is free to annex “immediately,” but refused to speculate on when exactly they are going to do it.

“The Israeli government will do what it’s going to do. But then the committee will form,” Friedman says.

“We will designate shortly the members of the committee from our side. We hope the Israeli government will do the same. We will be presented with the plan and the proposal and we’ll consider it as part of the agreement. And they’ll make a decision.”

He adds: “We’re cognizant that this is something that we’ll get to work on right away and we will try to get to the action real quickly.”

— Raphael Ahren