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Israel reacted furiously connected Thursday (December 25, 2025) to a condemnation by 14 countries, including France and Britain, of its support of new settlements successful the occupied West Bank, calling the disapproval discriminatory against Jews.
"Foreign governments volition not restrict the close of Jews to unrecorded successful the Land of Israel, and immoderate specified telephone is morally incorrect and discriminatory against Jews," Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said.
"The furniture determination to found 11 caller settlements and to formalise 8 further settlements is intended, among different things, to assistance code the information threats Israel is facing."
On Sunday (December 22), Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that authorities had greenlit the settlements, saying the determination was aimed astatine preventing the constitution of a Palestinian state.
Fourteen countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Canada, past issued a connection urging Israel to reverse its decision, "as good arsenic the enlargement of settlements".
Such unilateral actions, they said, "violate planetary law", and hazard undermining a fragile ceasefire successful Gaza successful unit since October 10.
They besides reaffirmed their "unwavering committedness to a comprehensive, conscionable and lasting bid based connected the two-state solution... wherever 2 antiauthoritarian states, Israel and Palestine, unrecorded side-by-side successful bid and security".
Israel has occupied the West Bank pursuing the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Excluding eastbound Jerusalem, which was occupied and annexed by Israel successful 1967, much than 500,000 Israelis unrecorded successful the West Bank, on with astir 3 cardinal Palestinian residents.
Earlier this month, the United Nations said the enlargement of Israeli settlements successful the West Bank, each of which are amerciable nether planetary law, had reached its highest level since astatine slightest 2017.
