The countries, including Britain, Canada, Denmark and France, said the Israeli regime’s decision to authorize 19 new settlements jeopardized the fragile truce in Gaza and undermined prospects for “long-term peace and security across the region”.

They warned that the expansion risked further destabilizing the situation as mediators seek to implement the second phase of a ceasefire in a war that has seen Israeli forces kill almost 71,000 Palestinians.

In response, the Israeli regime rejected the criticism and accused foreign governments of bias.

The announcement of the settlement expansion came days after Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said authorities had approved the plan with the explicit aim of blocking the creation of a Palestinian state.

“We are stopping the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state on the ground,” Smotrich said when unveiling the decision.

“We will continue to develop, build and settle in the land of our ancestors,” he added, according to The Times of Israel.

Smotrich said the Israeli regime “has approved for construction or retroactively legalized 69 new settlements since it took office at the end of 2022,” the daily reported.

Earlier this month, the United Nations said the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, all of which are illegal under international law, had reached its highest level since at least 2017.

The UN has repeatedly said settlement expansion by the Israeli regime is a major obstacle to peace, as it fragments Palestinian land and leaves little contiguous territory for a viable, independent Palestinian state under a two-state solution.

Separately, Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Odeh said the latest decision was reshaping realities on the ground for Palestinians, particularly in the northeastern West Bank, an area that had previously seen limited settlement activity.

“While these government decisions may seem bureaucratic, they are in fact strategic in nature,” Odeh wrote earlier this month.

“They support the more ideological and often more violent settlers entrenching their presence and taking over yet more Palestinian land, and becoming more brazen in their attacks against Palestinians, which are unprecedented in scope and effect,” she said.