Radical settlers and members of Israel's ruling rightwing party were seething on Sunday over a government decision to impose a temporary ease on settlement building after months of US pressure.

The settler lobby, a potent political force in Israel, is vigorously opposed to any restrictions on Jewish settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land and, along with members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, have slammed last week's announcement.

"I am completely opposed to" the ease in settlements, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, a Likud member, said ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

"As most Likud members, I am guessing that this measure will not get the Palestinians to the negotiating table," he told reporters.

Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that his government would impose a 10-month moratorium on issuing building permits for new homes in the occupied West Bank in a gesture aimed at getting the Palestinians to resume peace talks suspended during the Gaza war at the turn of the year.

The moratorium, however, excluded occupied and annexed east Jerusalem as well as the construction of public buildings in the West Bank. It also allows for completion of hundreds of units already under way.

The Palestinians, who have demanded a complete freeze on all settlement activity before the peace talks resume, have rejected Netanyahu's move as political.

Meanwhile hardline settlers have been hurling invective at US President Barack Obama's administration for pressing Netanyahu to take the decision.

During a gathering late on Saturday organised by a Likud hardliner, a mayor of the West Bank settlement of Beit Aryeh said Obama's administration posed a threat to believers in Eretz Israel (Greater Israel), the idea that Israel should have biblical-era borders.

"He hates the Jews and is an anti-Semite," Avi Naim said, in remarks that were widely re-broadcast on Sunday on Israeli radio and in the Israeli press.

"His regime is the worst with which Eretz Israel has ever been confronted, and I tell Barack Hussein Obama that he will not be able to stop us," he said.

"We will survive Obama," he added.