would remain unchanged.

He criticised the sanctions imposed on Moshe Sharvit and other settlers, saying his government viewed the move "with great severity". US sanctions against Moshe Sharvit were dropped when President Donald Trump came to power.The UN's top court ruled last year that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is against international law and that all settlement activity is illegal.

Israel rejects this and argues that settlements are necessary for security, citing lethal attacks by Palestinian gunmen on settlers, such as the killing of three people last January in the West Bank.Settlement expansion is anathema to Gil Alexander. He considers himself a Zionist, but within the existing borders of Israel.These are the frontiers that existed before it seized the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.

He is part of a network called the Jordan Valley Activists – Moshe Sharvit calls them "anarchists" - offering solidarity, and working for peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians."What they [the settlers] want to see happen," Gil Alexander told us, "[is] that it will be an area completely free of Arabs. It isn't Moshe. It's all the people above him who sent him here. Meaning from the top".

Moshe Sharvit's desire to have the Jordan Valley empty of Palestinians is shared by the leader of the regional council, a government-supported body, David Elhayani, who has visited the sanctioned settler.

In his air conditioned office about 15km (9 miles) from Moshe Sharvit's settler outpost he told us "the notion of settler violence is an invention of the anarchist, extreme left meant to harm the settlement image".In August, the UK Government said

and only go to pensioners on certain benefits.The communities minister

, but said Northern Ireland would have to follow suit.Last week, Lyons said £17m had been found in Stormont's latest monitoring round to allow him to help households affected by the cut.