Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s announcement comes despite international pressure against Israel’s construction of illegal settlements.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has declared 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in the occupied West Bank as state land, which will make it easier to use the site for settlement construction.

The announcement was made on Friday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Smotrich emphasized the government’s determination to push forward settlement construction in the West Bank despite growing international opposition.

“While there are people in Israel and around the world who seek to undermine our right to Judea and Samaria and the country in general, we promote settlement through hard work and in strategic ways throughout the country,” Smotrich said, using Biblical names for the West Bank area that are commonly used in Israel.

The designation of the Jordan Valley land as state land follows a similar designation of 300 hectares (740 acres) in the West Bank area of ​​Maale Adumim, which the Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state.

The US said last month that Israel’s expansion of West Bank settlements was inconsistent with international law, signaling a return to longstanding US policies that were reversed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.

The change brought the U.S. back into line with most of the world, which considers settlements built on Palestinian territory captured by Israel 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 country.

Earlier this month, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said said, “The establishment and further expansion of settlements constitutes… a war crime under international law.”

“Complicity and cover”

The Palestinian authorities condemned the land grab and settlement expansion.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the latest move a “crime” that was part of an “official policy in a race against time to annex the West Bank and eliminate the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state.”

“There are no morals, values, principles or international resolutions that can stop the far-right movement,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The international failure to protect our people is complicity and cover for Israel’s continued evasion of punishment,” it added.

Smotrich, the influential leader of one of the far-right pro-settler parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, lives in a settlement himself and has consistently advocated for settlement construction.

Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said the announced seizure was the largest since the 1993 Oslo Accords and that “2024 marks a peak in the scale of state land declarations.”

Peace Now called the timing of the announcement a “provocation” because it came during a visit by Blinken, who criticized Netanyahu’s government’s settlement expansion.

International pressure to restart efforts for a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel has grown amid efforts to end the nearly six-month war in Gaza.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, little progress has been made in achieving Palestinian statehood. Among the obstacles hindering this is the expansion of Israeli settlements.