Later on Monday, the White House denied having such discussions and a senior Israeli official said Netanyahu had not made a specific annexation proposal to Washington.

“Reports that the United States discussed with Israel an annexation plan for the West Bank are false,” White House spokesman Josh Raffel said. “The United States and Israel have never discussed such a proposal, and the president’s focus remains squarely on his Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative.”

Some commentators suggested Netanyahu’s remarks to Likud might have been a move to placate right-wingers in his cabinet rather than a concrete plan.

But the statement stoked Palestinian anger, already high over Trump’s Dec. 6 announcement that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a reversal of decades of U.S. policy.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said any annexation would “destroy all efforts to try and save the peace process”.

“No-one has the right to discuss the situation of the occupied Palestinian lands,” Abu Rdainah said from Moscow, where Abbas was holding talks with President Vladimir Putin amid reports they may discuss new options for Middle East mediation.

Most countries regard Israel’s settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this.

The Likud spokesman did not mention a timeframe for an annexation or go into further details on the U.S. discussions. He quoted Netanyahu as telling the lawmakers that any change in the settlements’ status must first be coordinated, “as much as possible” with the United States, Israel’s main ally.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, later said in a statement that Netanyahu had not presented the United States with specific annexation proposals “and anyway the U.S. has not expressed its agreement to the proposals”.

“Israel updated the Americans about different proposals being raised at the Knesset and the U.S. expressed its clear position that it wishes to advance President Trump’s peace plan,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

An Israel Radio political affairs commentator described Netanyahu’s comments as largely ideological in nature and said it was unlikely any practical steps would be taken in the near future.

Netanyahu’s comments to the legislators appeared, at least in part, to be an attempt to soften any political fallout within Likud over his decision on Sunday to block a bill proposed by several right-wing lawmakers to annex settlements.

A source at the prime minister’s office said on Sunday the bill was blocked in order to give diplomatic efforts more of a chance.

The Trump administration has been less critical than the administration of President Barack Obama of Israeli settlement policy. But in an interview published on Sunday in Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu newspaper, Trump urged Israel to tread cautiously.

“The settlements are something that very much complicates and always have complicated making peace, so I think Israel has to be very careful with the settlements,” Trump said.

Trump also voiced doubts about Palestinian and Israeli commitment to making peace.

Asked when he would unveil a promised new peace plan, Trump said: “We are going to see what goes on. Right now, I would say the Palestinians are not looking to make peace, they are not looking to make peace. And I am not necessarily sure that Israel is looking to make peace.”

U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in 2014, with the settlement issue one of the main factors behind their failure.

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Amazon is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs, according to a new report

In a rare move for the online retail giant, Amazon is laying off hundreds of corporate workers in its Seattle headquarters and elsewhere, according to a Seattle Times report.

The corporate cuts come after an eight-year hiring spree, taking the company from 5,000 in 2010 to 40,000 in its Seattle headquarters and gobbling up several retail businesses throughout the country.

However, according to the report, Amazon’s rising employee numbers over the last two years left some departments over budget and with too many staff on hand. In the last few months, the company implemented hiring freezes to stem the flow of new workers, cutting the number of open positions in half from the 3,500 listed last Summer.

The layoffs will mainly focus on Amazon’s Seattle office, but there have already been cuts in some of its retail subsidiaries in other parts of the country, such as the Las Vegas-based online footwear retailer Zappos, which had to lay off 30 people recently. And the company behind Diapers.com, Quidsi, had to cut more than 250 jobs a year ago.

The moves suggest Amazon may be trying to rein in spending and consolidate some of its retail businesses.

It’s important to note that cutting out a few hundred workers at a company with tens of thousands of employees is not unusual — and is pretty small in comparison to other established tech giants that have had to lay off far more recently. For instance, Microsoft had to lay off thousands of employees starting late last year — though most of those employees affected were outside of the United States.

The cuts also don’t indicate Amazon, which employs more than half a million people globally, has any intentions of cutting more or of slowing down its hiring practices elsewhere. According to its most recent quarterly earnings report, the company has upped its global workforce by 66 percent over the last year. Amazon currently has more than 4,000 job listings on its site for Seattle.

We have yet to hear back from Amazon about the latest report, but a spokesperson for the company told The Seattle Times the move was part of the company’s annual planning process and that, “We are making head count adjustments across the company — small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others.”

According to the report, several employees have already been told they’ve been laid off and those layoffs are expected to be completed in the next few weeks.

“For affected employees, we work to find roles in the areas where we are hiring,” the spokesperson said.

Featured Image: JASON REDMOND/Getty Images

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