The Associated Press reported that the Israeli plans included five hundred and sixty new homes in Maale Adumim, just outside Jerusalem.
There are also plans to build almost two hundred homes in the city of Jerusalem, as well as six hundred new homes in an Arab neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.
The US State Department spokesman JOHN KIRBY said the plans are the latest step in a systematic process of land seizures by Israel.
KIRBY said Israel’s settlement expansions and legalizations of outposts are fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis.
The United Nations Secretary General BAN KI-MOON has also expressed his disappointed with the Israeli government over the decision.
Israel has built more than one hundred settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, with some five hundred and seventy thousand Israelis living there.
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