JERUSALEM: In a rare statement of anger and criticism directed at a small group of extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned their attacks against a home being built by a Palestinian American from Ohio.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) managed to evict the lawbreakers who seized the house and arrested one person. But the group, mostly young, disaffected youths, who have set up unauthorized outposts and engaged in violence targeting Palestinians and their homes in the West Bank are becoming a growing problem for Israeli authorities who are being criticized for not doing enough to stop their violent actions.
Ambassador Huckabee posted on X in response to criticism that his team had not done enough, “The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has been VERY involved & the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal. The WH hasn’t “intervened” because we have kept DC apprised of the situation already. Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting. No excuse for such thuggish behavior.”
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According to The Associated Press, Israeli settlers have besieged three homes in the occupied West Bank for several days, including one owned by Palestinian American Loui Ridi. The seizure of Ridi’s home took place in Qusra, in the northern West Bank.
A senior Israeli official from the prime minister’s office said, “Israel doesn’t accept vigilantes or any form of violence by juvenile delinquents. We are investing a lot of efforts to curb such sporadic violence. The IDF sent an additional battalion to Judea and Samaria to address the issue. We don’t take violence lightly. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, there were over 350 investigations opened, leading to 35 arrests. Putting things in perspective, Jews are attacked almost daily by Palestinian terrorists. There were over 300 Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews in May of 2026 alone. The attempt to draw a false symmetry between sporadic violence and Palestinian terror is hypocritical.”
The official added, “We do not accept vigilantes. Judea and Samaria is our ancestral homeland. It’s where Jews came from and have a right to live. The Jewish community in Judea & Samaria is a law-abiding community. We are addressing the juvenile delinquents.”
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Nadav Eyal, a prominent Israeli columnist for the large Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth, told Fox News Digital, “There is an extending consensus in the Israeli political sphere, stretching from the left to the right, that some of the actions we are seeing in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, are, in actuality, Jewish terrorism. It is more widespread than it was ever before. It is considered by Israeli defense apparatus to be a serious problem.”
An Israeli military official said on Friday that “IDF soldiers evacuated illegal outposts in Judea and Samaria over 150 times in the first half of the year. An average of 2-3 illegal outposts have been evacuated each night in recent days. Fifteen cases are currently under investigation by the Israel Police.” The official continued that “2 outposts have already completed the lengthy Restitution Regulation process. Four mobile structures were confiscated in one operation, and the outpost was not reestablished afterward. Soldiers from three training bases in the area were brought in as reinforcements following a series of incidents.”
In another post on X, Huckabee stated, “Settlers” are not the problem in Judea/Samaria. “Unsettlers” are. Very small minority who do great damage to Palestinian families & to Israel.”
With over 500,000 Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, more commonly known as the West Bank, leaders of the settlement movements slammed the violence. The Jerusalem Post reported that the head of the Yesha Council, Yisrael Ganz, said, “There is no place for privately deciding to establish a hilltop outpost in the yard of a house, even when it is an illegal house or there is an attempt to take control of the area,” he said. “There is absolutely no justification for violence against uninvolved people or against the security forces.”
The newspaper also quoted Beit El Council head Shai Alon, who said they were causing “irreversible damage” to Israel and to the settlement movement, and described those responsible for attacks on innocent Palestinians as criminals.
Wafa, the Palestinian News & Info Agency, reported on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates “condemned the escalation of Israeli colonist terrorism and attacks against the town of Qusra.” According to the Ministry’s statement, the “crimes were part of systematic policies aimed at displacing Palestinians and uprooting them from their land while imposing a reality that serves plans to annex the West Bank.”
Israel’s Channel 12 News analyst, Amit Segal wrote on X that “Settler violence is a sensitive issue in Israel. Only a vanishingly small share of the settler population supports or takes part in such acts, but because the problem is exaggerated and used to obscure Palestinian violence against them, they bristle at hearing about it — even from Israel’s greatest friends.”
Segal said that “The most damning verdict of the event comes from Israel’s most faithful friend, Mike Huckabee. The most pro-settlement ambassador in the history of the post, a man who will not so much as use the word ‘settler’— called the men at Qusra ‘Israeli terrorists.’”
He added that “For four days, the most capable military in the Middle East could not clear a path for a family to reach its own front door. The family lives on the outskirts of Qusra, south of Nablus. On Sunday, settlers from the encampments seeded by the Tel Talpiot outpost sealed the entrance to their home and would not let them in or out.”
Fox News Digital sent a press query to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
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