Story highlights Ambassador David Friedman said Israel is "only occupying 2% of the West Bank"

A State Department spokeswoman said his comments "should not be read as a shift in US policy"

(CNN) The State Department distanced itself from its ambassador to Israel Thursday, after he broke with decades-long US policy by claiming that Israeli settlements built after 1967 are a part of Israel.

Ambassador David Friedman told Walla News that Israel is "only occupying 2% of the West Bank" and said "settlements are part of Israel."

"I think that was always the expectation when resolution 242 was adopted in 1967," Friedman said, talking about the UN Security Council resolutions that address the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The idea was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders. The existing borders, the 1967 borders, were viewed by everybody as not secure, so Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank, and it would return that which it didn't need for peace and security."

Friedman continued: "There is important nationalistic, historical (and) religious significance to those settlements, and I think the settlers view themselves as Israelis and Israel views the settlers as Israelis."

The Trump administration has said that settlement activity is not helpful to reaching a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians which President Donald Trump has said is a top priority.

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