JERUSALEM — The Israeli government on Tuesday retroactively legalized three Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank, and moved to delay the scheduled evacuation of a fourth, in a provocative move that some critics said marked the first establishment of new settlements in two decades.

But while antisettlement advocates saw it as a significant shift in policy that could undermine the prospects for a two-state solution — and the United States and other foreign governments immediately raised concerns about the move — a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that it was simply a matter of resolving technical problems such as improper permits and mistakenly building on the wrong hill.

“One can be critical of the Israeli settlement policy, that’s everybody’s right, but you can’t tell me that the Israeli government has built new settlements, and you can’t tell me this is legalizing unauthorized outposts,” said the Netanyahu spokesman, Mark Regev. “These decisions are procedural or technical. They don’t change anything whatsoever on the ground.”

As with most matters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is disagreement over the basic facts concerning the three settlements, where 188 families live. Mr. Regev cited government decisions regarding two of them, Bruchin and Sansana, going back to 1983, and a 1991 authorization for the third, Rechelim, and denied that they were “outposts,” the most fiercely fought-over category of settlements.