US criticizes Israeli order on West Bank settler outpost

The Biden administration on Sunday rebuked Israel over an order that allows Jewish settlers to establish a permanent presence in a West Bank outpost that Washington has warned Jerusalem it should avoid legitimizing.
The chief of the Israeli military’s Central Command signed an order on Thursday that allows Israelis to enter the Homesh outpost area, paving the way for a ormal settlement to be built there, the Times of Israel reported.
The State Department has repeatedly called on Israel to refrain from any moves that escalate tensions with Palestinians, like formalizing settler outposts, and specifically warned it over Homesh.
“We are deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s order that allows its citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, which according to Israeli law was illegally built on private Palestinian land,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement
on Sunday.
The order is inconsistent with Israeli government commitments made in 2004 and more recently to Biden administration officials, Miller said.