Huckabee Went to Turmus Ayya and Called Israeli Settler Attacks 'An Act of Terror'

TURMUS AYYA, West Bank — The American ambassador to Israel condemned Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank again on Saturday, using the strongest language he has yet applied to it during a visit to a village that has reported repeated attacks over the past year.

"If there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them, if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone's home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that's a criminal act," Mike Huckabee said in Turmus Ayya. "But it extends beyond a criminal act. It's an act of terror."

Huckabee opened his remarks by making clear whom he was there for. Turmus Ayya is unusual among West Bank villages in the size of its American population, and U.S. citizens make up a small share of the roughly 3 million Palestinians living in the territory. "I'm very aware that a lot of the American people who live in Turmus Ayya and other communities across this region are not enjoying the life they deserve to live, not enjoying it in a peaceful way," he said. "It's a life that is disturbed by people who have created extraordinary challenges that are unfair and illegal."

He met with about 10 Palestinian American residents who described what the attacks had done to their families and their property, the municipality told The Associated Press. Huckabee was careful about the limits of his own office. The U.S. Embassy cannot investigate crimes, he said, but it can tell its host government that "there are needs that need to be addressed, there are issues that cannot go unnoticed, and specific crimes and acts of terror that cannot continue without that country doing the investigation and adjudication that every person has a right to expect."

Attacks by settlers on Palestinian communities in the West Bank have surged since the war in Gaza began with the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the United Nations humanitarian office. The pressure on the Israeli government to respond has been building for weeks. A week ago Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the actions of what he called a "handful of rioters," and the Israeli foreign ministry called the settlers' conduct "a disgrace."

Netanyahu leads the most ultranationalist and religious government in Israel's history, and it has overseen a surge in settlement construction. Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians want all three for a future state, and the United Nations and most of the international community regard them as illegally occupied. Since 1967 Israel has built close to 150 settlements in the West Bank, now home to well over 500,000 settlers, many of them living in developments that look like ordinary suburbs.

The Israeli military operates throughout the West Bank, but human rights organizations have long argued that soldiers routinely look past settler violence rather than stopping it. Settlers are Israeli citizens, and Israel's defense minister recently announced plans to hand law enforcement among the settler population fully over to the Israeli police, a change whose practical effect on prosecutions is not yet clear.