US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's announcement recognising illegal Jewish-settlements in the occupied West Bank has been condemned by many countries.

Under international law both the West Bank and East Jerusalem are occupied territories and all Israeli settlement-building activity there is therefore illegal. 

According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power cannot transfer its civilian population to territories under its control. 

Israel occupied Jerusalem and the whole of the West Bank following the 1967 Six-Day War and began establishing settlements in the West Bank the following year.

Around 600,000 Jewish settlers, 200,000 in East Jerusalem and 400,000 in the West Bank, live beyond the Zionist state's 1967 borders.