Listen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated using AI-based technology. Pronunciation errors may occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve results. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee met on Saturday with Palestinian Americans, including relatives of US citizens killed by Israeli settlers, in a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank that has been the target of settler attacks. The visit comes as settler violence, and what is widely perceived as the inaction of the Israeli government, has increasingly drawn international condemnation, including from US allies. The Israeli government has condemned settler violence, although perpetrators are rarely arrested and even less frequently. Washington has not criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the violence, but has called for the perpetrators to be prosecuted, with Huckabee calling them terrorists. The ambassador described their meeting in Turmus Ayya, where the majority of the city’s Palestinian residents are American citizens, as constructive. He believes they represent a minority of the settler community, which numbers about 750,000. Some three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank, and tens of thousands are estimated to be American citizens. Palestinians in the West Bank have faced increased settler violence while their freedoms have been increasingly restricted under military occupation since Netanyahu’s coalition, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, came to power in late 2022. In Turmus Ayya, Palestinians face what Mayor Nawwaf Zaghoul said were constant settler attacks. About 80 percent of the Palestinian city’s roughly 3,000 residents have U.S. citizenship, he said. Tours have been set up to Israeli settlements around the city, including Shiloh, which the ambassador has visited twice since 2025. Huckabee, the first evangelical Christian to serve as the United States envoy to Israel, refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, its biblical name, which is used by the Israeli government but has not been adopted by the United States. USA. A caravan carrying Huckabee leaves Saturday after he met with residents of Turmus Ayya. He described the meeting as constructive. (Ammar Awad/Reuters) Huckabee told reporters at Turmus Ayya that it was in the Israeli government’s interest to take action against those carrying out “criminal behavior and terrorism” and that a “small group of small marauders,” which he said numbered a few hundred people, were damaging the country’s reputation. needed to be corrected. In January 2025, shortly after returning to office, US President Donald Trump rescinded sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Yasser Alkam, a Palestinian American and municipal spokesman, disagreed with Huckabee’s characterization that only a few hundred settlers were carrying out acts of violence against Palestinians. There were thousands, he said, not hundreds.WATCH | Israeli-occupied West Bank town under siege last month: US ambassador condemns Israeli settlers’ siege of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. The violent behavior of Israeli settlers besieging Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank has drawn a rare rebuke from US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. “The United States has the power to put pressure on Israel, at least arrest these settlers, who are known to the authorities,” Alkam told reporters. “They can identify them, one by one, and arrest them, if they wish, with the right amount of pressure from the US Embassy and the US administration.” Among those who met with Huckabee on Saturday was Hadeel Jabara, a Palestinian American mother of two young children whose husband, Omar, a U.S. citizen, was killed by settlers in 2023. She described the meeting as positive, adding that she hoped the U.S. government could help protect residents and that she feared for the safety of her children. Six Palestinian Americans have been killed in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli military or settlers since 2024.
