Fourteen countries — including France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan — condemned on Wednesday Israel’s recent decision to authorize new illegal Israeli colonies in the occupied West Bank, urging the Israeli government to reverse the move and halt all settlement expansion, according to Agence France-Presse.
In a joint statement released by the French Foreign Ministry, the governments of Germany, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Ireland, Iceland, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom said they “condemn the Israeli Security Cabinet’s approval of 19 new illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank.”
The statement reaffirmed the group’s “strong opposition to any form of annexation and to all expansion of Israel’s settlement policy,” stressing that such actions violate international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, and directly undermine prospects for a just and lasting peace.
The condemnation comes as Israel accelerates its annexation agenda across the occupied territory.
On Wednesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who holds expanded authority over colonialist affairs — approved a plan to double the size of the illegal Yitzhar colony in the northern West Bank by adding 398 new housing units.
Yitzhar south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, is known as one of the most violent and ideologically extreme colonies, with illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers frequently attacking surrounding Palestinian communities.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana praised the expansion drive, openly supporting the de facto annexation of the West Bank through intensified settlement construction.
He argued that “if Israel insists on building more settlements, the world will eventually be forced to recognize the annexation of the West Bank,” adding that Israel’s claim of sovereignty “is practically built through expanding Israeli settlement activity.”
The coordinated international criticism follows a series of recent Israeli decisions to “legalize” outposts, expand existing colonies, and seize additional Palestinian land — moves that directly violate UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which demands an immediate halt to all settlement activity and affirms that the international community will not recognize any changes to the 1967 borders.
Israel’s ongoing settlement expansion is widely viewed by legal experts, UN bodies, and humanitarian organizations as part of a systematic effort to entrench permanent control over the occupied West Bank, fragment Palestinian territory, and prevent the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and acts of terror against civilian populations.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
Articles 53 and 147, prohibit the destruction of civilian property and classify pillage as a war crime.
