Nick Clegg risks damaging peace process over 'inflammatory' Israel settlement remarks Mr Clegg's remarks could also be used to incite violence against settlers, he added. This "absolutely" was a risk because "vandalism is something that you want to get rid of." Mr Ayalon added that "others might like to use it as an excuse" for violence. The British Government has always opposed Israel's expansion of settlements on occupied land. Today, 122 formal settlements with 297,000 inhabitants are found across the West Bank, according to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. Their population has risen by almost 100,000 in the last decade. Meanwhile, East Jerusalem has another 188,000 settlers, meaning that a total of more than 485,000 now inhabit land that Israel captured in the Six Day War of 1967. This total has increased by at least 170,000 since 1997. Britain's long-standing view is that settlement expansion creates "facts on the ground," making it harder to reach agreement on the birth of a Palestinian state. America, the European Union and the United Nations have the same position. The settlements also breach international law, although the Israeli government disputes this. Israel expects any British minister to state their Government's well-known opinion. "We respect the British position, we regard it as a legitimate argument between friends and allies," said Mr Ayalon. We may have to agree to disagree on this issue. What caught Israel by surprise was the vehemence of Mr Clegg's statement. By stating the British position in such unsparing terms, the Deputy Prime Minister appears to have broken the unwritten rules of the diplomatic game and reinforced Israel's view that it faces a climate of greater hostility. Mr Ayalon said: "We have the greatest appreciation for the position of the Deputy Prime Minister as a politician and for Mr Clegg himself. So this is why we see it as a problem. But he added: "We look at it as an isolated case, not reflective of the very strong relations that we have." In general, said Mr Ayalon, Britain and Israel saw "eye to eye" on the Middle East, notably over the dangers posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions. We believe in the same things. We have the same interests of basically a calm Middle East," he said. Mr Ayalon, a member of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, is among the most hardline members of the Israeli coalition. His central argument is that European countries fundamentally misunderstand the Arab-Israeli conflict, wrongly seeing it as a dispute over territory. Instead, he believes that Israel is locked in an ideological struggle with extremist opponents who want to purge the Middle East of a Jewish state. On this view, territorial concessions can be futile. "If this was a territorial conflict, it would have been solved by the earlier offers of Israel," he said.