US ambassador visits Palestinian town amid rise in West Bank settler violence

By Ali Sawafta and Alexander Cornwell

TURMUS AYYA, West Bank, Sept 5 (Reuters) – U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Saturday met with Palestinian Americans, including relatives of U.S. 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 Israeli government’s inaction, has increasingly drawn international condemnation, including from U.S. allies.

The Israeli government has condemned settler violence, though perpetrators are rarely arrested and even less frequently prosecuted.

Washington has not criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over the violence, though has called for perpetrators to be prosecuted with Huckabee labelling them as terrorists.

Huckabee described his meeting in Turmus Ayya, where most of the town’s Palestinian residents are U.S. citizens, as constructive.

While Huckabee, a Baptist minister and longtime supporter of Israeli settlements, has previously called for violent settlers to be prosecuted, he also says he believes they represent a minority of the settler community, which numbers around 750,000.

Around 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, with tens of thousands estimated to be American citizens.

Palestinians in the West Bank have faced a surge in settler violence while their freedoms have been increasingly curtailed 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 are facing what Mayor Nawwaf Zaghoul said were constant settler attacks. About 80% of the Palestinian town’s residents hold U.S. citizenship, he said.

VISITS TO SHILOH

Israeli settlements have been established around the town, including Shiloh, which Huckabee has visited twice since 2025. Huckabee, the first evangelical Christian to serve as U.S. ambassador 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.

Huckabee told reporters in Turmus Ayya it was in the Israeli government’s interest to take action against those carrying out “criminal behaviour and terrorism”, and that a “tiny group of little marauders”, who he said numbered a few hundred people, were damaging the country’s reputation.

He also said he had told Palestinian Americans that the U.S. embassy had no power or authority to take action and could only seek to influence and call attention to issues that the U.S. government believed needed to be corrected.

In January 2025, shortly after returning to office, 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 a municipality spokesperson, disagreed with Huckabee’s characterization that only a few hundred settlers were carrying out violence against Palestinians. There were thousands, he said, not hundreds.

 “The United States does have the power to pressure Israel at least arrest these settlers, which are known to the authorities,” he told reporters. “They can identify them, one by one, and arrest them, if they want to, with the right amount of pressure from the United States embassy and the United States administration.”

Among those who met 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 her children’s safety.

At least six Palestinian Americans have been killed in the West Bank either by the Israeli military or settlers since 2024.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Ed Osmond)