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Late on Tuesday, Smotrich announced the approval of a new
settlement called Mishmar Yehuda, in Gush Etzion, a cluster of
Jewish settlements located south of Jerusalem, and said work
would continue on authorizing further settlements.
"We will continue the momentum of settlement throughout the
country," he said in a statement.
The move comes just days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken said Washington considered Jewish settlements in the
West Bank to be inconsistent with international law, reverting
to a longstanding U.S. position that was overturned by the
administration of former President Donald Trump.
The change brought the United States back into line with most of
the world, which considers the settlements built on territory
Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war to be illegal.
Israel itself disputes this view, citing the Jewish people's
historical and Biblical ties to the land.
The Palestinians say that the expansion of settlements across
the West Bank is part of a deliberate Israeli policy to
undermine its ambition of creating an independent state with
East Jerusalem as its capital.
Last week, Israeli ministers agreed to convene a planning
council to approve some 3,300 homes to be built in settlements,
a decision that Blinken said had disappointed Washington, which
has been pushing a resumption of efforts for a two state
solution to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians.
Smotrich, the influential leader of one of the hard-right
pro-settler parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
coalition government, himself lives in a settlement and has
consistently backed further settlement building.
"This is also our answer to the nations of the world," said
Shlomo Ne'eman, Mayor of the Gush Etzion Regional Council. "We
will continue onwards and strengthen Gush Etzion with more
residents, more schools, more roads and more kindergartens."
The Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, which monitors settlement
expansion, said in a report last month there had been an
unprecedented surge in settlement activities since the start of
the Gaza war in October.
According to a report by the United Nations Human Rights
Committee, just under 700,000 settlers live in 279 settlements
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, up from 520,000 in 2012.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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