G7 foreign ministers have condemned the move by Israel to legalise five outposts in the West Bank and slammed its decision to expand existing settlements and establish new ones, AFP reports.

“We, the G7 foreign ministers … join the UN and the European Union in condemning the announcement by Israeli Finance Minister [Bezalel] Smotrich that five outposts are to be legalised in the West Bank,” read a statement that also rejected Israel’s decision to declare over 1,270 hectares (3,100 acres) as “state lands”.

It called the latter “the largest such declaration of state land since the Oslo Accords.”

The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven rich nations also criticised Israel’s decision “to expand existing settlements in the occupied West Bank by 5,295 new housing units and to establish three new settlements”.

It called Israel’s settlement programme “inconsistent with international law and counterproductive to the cause of peace”.