JEWISH settlers have built a religious school in an occupied West Bank outpost that they had been barred from re-entering until recently, they said today.

The school was built yesterday in Homesh, one of four West Bank outposts evacuated as part of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

An act that year barred Israelis from re-entering the sites, but that was repealed by the far-right Tel Aviv government in March.

Anti-settlement groups say more settlement construction in those areas further dims any hopes for an independent Palestinian state. 

The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has also voiced concern over the move.

Video on social media showed settler leaders dedicating the one storey religious school with a prayer, saying they hoped to rebuild the other evacuated settlements as well.

Homesh has been at the centre of settler efforts to deepen Israel’s hold on the northern West Bank. 

The military largely ignored settlers who set up tents and other structures at the outpost on the foundations of former Palestinian homes.

Israel’s government also made settlement building one of its top priorities in the new budget it agreed last week.

The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is made up of ultra-nationalist settler supporters, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also has some authority over West Bank settlements. 

Israeli Army Radio said the Homesh seminary was built with approval from Mr Smotrich and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Ministers praised the new construction, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a settler himself, saying it was “an exciting historic moment.”

Israel’s intentions at Homesh and the other three settlements dismantled in 2005 have drawn repeated rebukes from Washington, which has said it is “deeply troubled” by moves to resettle the area. 

The UN considers Israeli settlements, home to 700,000 people in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, to be illegal under international law and obstacles to peace.

The construction at Homesh comes at a time of increased violence from Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinians in the West Bank, much of it concentrated in the northern part of the territory. 

Israel has been staging near-nightly raids since last spring.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for state.