US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday the United States will not join Britain-led sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements and that it does not want anything to destabilize the West Bank.

"Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did," Rubio told journalists of the sanctions before departing on a trip to Latin America, adding: "We don't want to see anything destabilizing going on right now in the West Bank with so much going on in the region."

Twelve countries including Britain, Canada and France announced earlier in the day that they would impose sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The action follows weeks of increasing attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian villages in the illegally occupied territory. The violence has drawn widespread condemnation from the international community.

The foreign ministers of the 12 countries said in a statement that actions by the Israeli government in the West Bank were undermining the possibility of a two-state solution, referring to a plan under which two states -- one Israeli and one Palestinian -- would live peacefully side by side.

Israel ordered the closure of Britain's consulate in Jerusalem in retaliation for the sanctions effort.

© Agence France-Presse