Washington (QNN)- The Trump administration lifted a decades-old ban on Wednesday that had prohibited US taxpayer funding for Israeli research conducted in Israeli illegal settlements in Palestine. Trump's move, which comes less than a week before the US election, has been hailed by Netanyahu and it is expected to attract evangelical Christian voters. The agreement was signed at the illegal settlement of Ariel, which was built in 1978 on land stolen from the villages of Salfit, Iskaka, Marada, and Kifl Haris. “The Trump vision ... opens Judea and Samaria to academic, commercial and scientific engagement with the United States,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony in Ariel, using biblical names for West Bank territory. “This is an important victory against all those who seek to delegitimise everything Israeli beyond the 1967 lines.” Friedman said $1.4 billion had been invested by three US-Israeli research cooperation funds since 1972. The Trump administration last year effectively backed Israeli settlements in the Wesr Bank and Jerusalem by abandoning a long-held US position that they were inconsistent with international law.