Mike Huckabee claims Israelis living in West Bank are not violating international laws

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee appeared to back Israeli plans to build settlements that would effectively divide the occupied West Bank and kill the prospect of a future Palestinian state, after saying that Israeli settlers in the occupied territory are not violating international law.

His comments come after Israel approved plans for settlement construction in the E1 area, which would result in the severing of the north from the south of the West Bank.

"It is not a violation of international law for Israelis to live in Judea and Samaria," he told Saudi news channel Al-Arabiya, using the Israeli term for the West Bank.

"It is a war crime for an occupying power to transfer its own civilian population into the territory it occupies," a spokesperson said.

"One of the reasons we're seeing the more aggressive decision to move into some of these areas, is because it's in reaction to what the Europeans have done, in concert with the Palestinian Authority, pushing for the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state and pushing for this UN conference, which is supposed to happen next month in New York," Huckabee said.

He claimed that a pledge by several European countries to recognise a Palestinian state at next month's UN General Assembly would have detrimental consequences for Palestinians.

"I don't know what the Europeans thought they were going to accomplish, but through their actions, they are accomplishing something they didn't want to: essentially give a green light to the Israelis to take more pieces of Judea and Samaria, either by sovereignty or annexation," he said.

"If there's going to be this massive violation of the Oslo agreement, then people have to prepare for the consequences of that – on both sides of the conflict," he continued, claiming that recognising a Palestinian state without cooperation from Israel is a violation of the Oslo Accords.

The plans for the E1 settlement have seen dozens of countries, including allies, decrying the move as a violation of international law.

The UN human rights office said the settlement would result in the forced displacement of Palestinians in the area, amounting to a war crime.

Earlier this week, Huckabee said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio that the US does not oppose the "massive expansion" of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and does not see the move as violating international law, something that goes against conventional legal opinion.

"We would not try to evaluate the good and the bad of that, but simply just say that, as a general rule, it is not a violation of international law. It’s also, I think, incumbent on all of us to recognise that Israelis have a right to live in Israel," he continued.

Israel has pressed ahead with illegal settlement expansion despite decades of global opposition and being defined as illegal under international law. About 700,000 Israeli settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

While Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, it has not formally extended sovereignty over the West Bank, which most world powers regard as occupied territory.

Human rights groups, including the Israeli organisation Peace Now, have long described E1 as a "knockout blow" to the two-state solution.