The United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, condemned on Thursday a days-long siege by Israeli settlers of a Palestinian American family’s home in the occupied West Bank, describing it as a “horrific act of terror.”
The rebuke, posted on X, marked an unusually forceful criticism from the Trump administration amid a surge of settler violence in the territory, where settlers had surrounded homes in the village of Qusra since Sunday, throwing stones and trapping residents inside as food and water supplies dwindled, says AP.
According to local officials and members of the affected family, settlers—at times numbering in the dozens—gathered around three houses in Qusra, including one belonging to Palestinian American Loui Ridi.
They threw stones, tried to bring down a nearby stone wall, and blocked occupants from leaving. By Thursday morning, Ridi’s brother, Qusai Abu Rida, who had remained inside with his teenage son to defend the property, said Israeli forces had relocated them to another home, though they still could not leave the area entirely.
The Israeli military declined to confirm whether it had moved Abu Rida and other residents, but troops have intervened in recent days in an apparent effort to restore order.
The military said on Thursday that soldiers had dismantled two illegal outposts on the outskirts of Qusra and a neighbouring village, and had detained one Israeli.
Additional troops, it added, had been deployed to the area—roughly 16 kilometres from the Palestinian city of Nablus—to carry out defensive missions and patrols.
Qusra’s mayor, Abdel Azim Wadi, said Israeli forces had evacuated seven homes in total in order to take up positions in the village.
Although settlers had been removed from their outposts, he said, they remained present in other parts of Qusra. Journalists near the village reported that access roads were closed on Thursday afternoon.
Israeli police did not immediately respond to enquiries about whether any of the detained Israelis had been formally arrested.
The episode has reignited accusations from Palestinians and members of Israel’s opposition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government has turned a blind eye to settler attacks on Palestinians, amid a rise in such clashes over recent years.
Huckabee, a longtime supporter of Israel’s settler movement who has previously backed Israeli control over the West Bank, has nonetheless condemned settler violence in the past.
In his post, he said the actions of those responsible for the siege were “disgusting,” adding that the US embassy had been coordinating with Israeli military and police.
Speaking by telephone from Ohio, where he lives, Ridi told reporters his 48-year-old brother and nephew had been without fresh food or water for several days.
He said settlers had targeted his home for months prior to the recent escalation, cutting off water and electricity and throwing stones that damaged the property. He described the family as feeling like prisoners in their own house.
The siege began on Sunday, with settlers blocking doors and preventing residents from leaving, according to Abu Rida. Israel’s military on Tuesday condemned the action as “illegal, reprehensible, and unacceptable” and declared the area a closed military zone, though dozens of settlers had returned by Wednesday to block roads with rocks.
Qusra lies in one of the most volatile areas of the northern West Bank, encircled by settlements. Last month, a mosque there was set alight in a suspected settler attack, following the killing of an Israeli settler that triggered violence claiming the lives of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian villagers.
Settlers have continued expanding outposts in the region, in moves widely condemned internationally as undermining prospects for a future
Palestinian state in territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war.
