Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates led regional states on Monday in condemning Israel's move to ease settlement expansion and widen its powers in the West Bank, a step critics said went in the direction of annexing occupied land.

Sunday's decisions by Israel's security cabinet will make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land in the ​West Bank and give Israeli authorities more power to act in areas supposedly under full Palestinian control, two senior Israeli ministers said.

One of them, ‍ultranationalist Finance ⁠Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said in announcing the decisions that the government would "continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian ‍state."

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