RAMALLAH, Palestine

Palestine criticized Friday the Israeli government's decision to "legalize" settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned the Israeli government's legitimizing of five settlement outposts in the West Bank, alongside plans to construct thousands of new settlement housing units across the region,” according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The ministry expressed “deep concern over the Israeli government's continued settlement expansion and consolidating of the apartheid regime.”

It emphasized that these actions “aim to close the door on any opportunity for the realization of a Palestinian state.”

The ministry held Israel “fully and directly responsible for the serious consequences and implications of these actions on the conflict arena and the region as a whole.”

“The escalation of settlement activities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, blatantly challenges relevant international legitimacy resolutions, particularly Resolution 2334. This reflects official Israeli disregard for the international consensus rejecting colonization as an obstacle to the two-state solution,” the ministry said.

It called for “urgent American and international intervention,” and "halting Israel's unilateral and unlawful measures, imposing effective international sanctions on the entire colonial settlement system, and applying real pressure on the Israeli government to cease settlement activities and comply with international peace efforts.”

The Israeli Cabinet on Thursday evening approved steps proposed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich aimed at "legalizing" settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank and imposing sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.

Settlement outposts are small communities established by illegal Israeli settlers on privately owned Palestinian land without approval from the Israeli government.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi in Ankara