US Ambassador Huckabee Labels Israeli Settler Assaults on West Bank Palestinians as ‘Terrorist’ Acts

During a rare gathering with Palestinian American residents on Saturday, the U.S. ambassador to Israel strongly condemned the escalating wave of Israeli extremist violence targeting Palestinians in the West Bank, branding the perpetrators as “terrorists.”

Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s remarks arrived against a backdrop of intensifying Jewish settler aggression. Just last month, settlers surrounded the residence of an American citizen close to Qusra in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, prompting widespread international criticism.

Huckabee convened a town hall with the predominantly Palestinian American community of Turmus Aya, where residents shared harrowing accounts of daily existence under Israeli military control and the pervasive atmosphere of fear fostered by settler intimidation.

According to an embassy transcript, the ambassador expressed being “deeply grieved” by their testimonies. He pledged to apply “pressure in order to get some resolution to things you’ve brought up today,” though he did not specify what such resolution might look like.

This engagement represented a notable departure for Huckabee, an evangelical pastor and former Arkansas governor whose political views have historically aligned with Israel’s right-wing settler constituency. Several Turmus Aya residents indicated they could not remember a comparable visit by a U.S. ambassador to Israel in recent memory, though other American officials have made similar trips.

Despite his empathetic words, some Palestinian Americans left the meeting feeling let down, noting that while the ambassador had listened attentively and spoken firmly, he offered no assurance of tangible improvements.

“There’s a lot of pain, because I don’t know to whom we can turn at this point,” remarked Yasser Alqam, a U.S. citizen and local official who assisted in arranging Huckabee’s visit. “We pinned a lot of hopes on the ambassador’s visit. But he didn’t give us satisfactory answers.”

The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment when asked about Huckabee’s statements.

Incidents of extremist Israeli settler aggression against West Bank Palestinians have risen sharply over the past three years, occurring alongside the Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

United Nations data indicates that more than 1,000 Palestinians have sustained injuries from settler assaults since the start of 2026. Israeli settler groups—frequently escorted by Israeli soldiers—have set fire to and vandalized structures while physically assaulting locals.

As the occupying authority, the Israeli military bears responsibility for maintaining law and order throughout the territory. Nevertheless, Israeli human rights organizations contend that prosecutions for such assaults remain scarce, allowing extremists to act largely without consequence. Yesh Din, a monitoring group, reported that merely 3 percent of investigations it tracked between 2005 and 2025 resulted in full or partial convictions.

Palestinians and Israeli advocacy groups further maintain that Israeli forces often turn a blind eye during settler assaults or occasionally participate in them directly.

Huckabee stated he had pressed the Israeli government to pursue “equal disbursement of justice for every kind of crime.” He acknowledged that the U.S. Embassy in Israel possessed limited authority to curb the violence, though it could “influence and call attention to what needs to be corrected.”

“My view is that crime is crime and terror is terror, and it ought to be a consequence to the full extent of the law,” Huckabee declared. When reporters pressed him on whether Israel was doing enough to prosecute offenders, the ambassador declined to offer an evaluation.

Following another violent incident in Qusra last weekend—where settlers besieged a house in August—Prime Minister Netanyahu issued an uncommon denunciation of the violence and affirmed his expectation that law enforcement would apprehend those responsible.

On Thursday, Israeli police announced the arrest of more than 15 individuals in recent days for their alleged involvement in various West Bank attacks, including those in Qusra.

Approximately three million Palestinians reside in the occupied West Bank alongside roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers. Thousands of Palestinian Americans make their home in relatively affluent Palestinian communities like Turmus Aya—some residing permanently, others visiting during summer months to be with family.

Many had long believed their U.S. citizenship would provide a measure of safeguard against Israeli actions in the occupied territory. Yet in recent years, they too have experienced Israel’s tightening grip on the West Bank and faced increasingly brazen assaults by Israeli extremists.

During the summer of 2023, dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Turmus Aya and neighboring Palestinian communities, igniting fires that destroyed numerous vehicles, buildings, and agricultural land.

The previous year, Israeli soldiers fatally shot Amer Rabee, a Palestinian American teenager from Turmus Aya, striking him multiple times in his upper body. The Israeli military alleged the teenager and two companions had thrown rocks toward the highway, endangering civilians. His family and one of the surviving boys disputed this version of events.

Alqam expressed disappointment that the ambassador characterized the attackers as a small minority and pushed back against the notion that the United States held limited leverage over Israel. He pointed out that shortly after returning to office in 2025, President Trump had lifted sanctions previously imposed on extremist Israeli settlers by the Biden administration.

“The United States does have the power to pressure Israel to at least arrest these settlers, who are known to the authorities,” Alqam argued. “They can identify them, one by one.”

The town hall was held at the residence of Sameer Barakat, a Palestinian American who relocated to the West Bank from Dallas earlier this year. Barakat reported that his home had already been struck with rocks, prompting him to install barbed wire around the property.

“What I want to say to Mr. Huckabee is that we need protection for Americans here,” Barakat stated before the gathering. “They are protected everywhere except in Palestine. Your responsibility is to protect us.”

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