Blinken says new Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal, reversing Trump’s policies.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Friday that the U.S. government now views new Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories as “contrary to international law,” reversing a Trump administration policy and returning to a decades-long U.S. position .

Mr Blinken was speaking at a news conference in Buenos Aires after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made an announcement on Thursday indicating that thousands of new homes would be added to the settlements. Mr Blinken said he was “disappointed” by the announcement.

“It has long been U.S. policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations that new settlements are counterproductive to achieving lasting peace,” he said. “They are contrary to international law. Our government remains firmly opposed to settlement expansion. And in our judgment, this only weakens – it does not strengthen – Israel’s security.”

Mr Blinken was in Argentina for meetings with recently elected President Javier Milei and Secretary of State Diana Mondino.

In Washington, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, reiterated that position in comments to reporters. “This is a position that has been consistent across a series of Republican and Democratic administrations – if any administration is inconsistent, it was the last one,” he said.

State Department officials declined to say what, if any, actions the United States might take to hold Israeli settlers or the government legally liable for the construction of new settlements.

For many years, the settlements have been spread across the West Bank, the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, without the United States pushing for any legal action. About 500,000 residents now live in the occupied West Bank and more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

In November 2019, President Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, reversed four decades of US policy by saying the settlements did not violate international law. State Department lawyers never issued a new legal decision supporting this policy change, and Mr. Blinken’s return to the old policy is consistent with a long-standing legal conclusion by the Department.

Beginning in 2021, when President Biden took office, diplomatic reporters asked State Department officials whether Mr. Blinken planned to reverse Mr. Pompeo’s move, but the officials each time said there was no change in policy.

Some State Department officials had grown concerned last year about a sharp increase in violence by extremist settlers. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, violence increased in the West Bank, and Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken began denouncing the actions and settlement expansion.

On Friday afternoon, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal Jewish American advocacy group that tries to shape policy toward Israel, praised Mr. Blinken’s announcement.

“Now the government must make it clear that, especially in light of the volatility of the current situation between Israelis and Palestinians, there should be no further expansion of the settlement enterprise,” he said in a statement. He added that the Biden administration must demonstrate that it will “take further steps to reinforce its position – and that of the international community – that the creeping annexation of the West Bank must stop.”

Pompeo’s move in 2019 strengthened the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had vowed to annex the West Bank in two elections that year. Netanyahu’s new governing coalition has several far-right ministers who support this direction, and it is those politicians who have helped Netanyahu stay in power despite widespread criticism of him over his failure to protect Israel from the October 7 attacks. Hamas and its attempts to undermine the power of the judiciary.

On Thursday evening, the office of one of those ministers, Mr. Smotrich, announced that an existing Israeli planning commission to oversee construction in the West Bank would be convened.

He said the committee would move forward with plans for more than 3,000 homes, most of them in Ma’ale Adumim, near the site of a Palestinian shooting earlier the same day. Mr. Smotrich’s office described the settlement expansion as an “appropriate Zionist response” to the attack.

“Let any terrorist who wishes to harm us know that raising a hand against the citizens of Israel will be met with death, destruction and the deepening of our eternal hold on the entire land of Israel,” Mr. Smotrich said in a statement .

Mr. Smotrich’s office did not say when the committee would be convened, whether the housing units would be new homes or what stage of the planning process they were in.

Mr. Blinken also said he would refrain from judging the post-war plan for Gaza that Mr. Netanyahu has begun circulating among Israeli officials. Mr. Blinken said any plan must adhere to three principles: Gaza must not be a base for terrorism; the Israeli government must not reoccupy Gaza; and the size of Gaza’s territory must not be reduced.

“There are certain basic principles that we laid out many months ago,” he said, referring to the outcome of a diplomatic conclave in Tokyo, “that we believe are very important when it comes to the future of Gaza.”

Aaron Bokserman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.