U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called settlers besieging a West Bank home of an American-Palestinian family "terrorists."

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

A standoff in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has caught the attention of the Trump administration. A group of Israeli settlers besieged Palestinians in their homes for days. And one of those homes belongs to a U.S. citizen. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, took the unusual step of calling those Israeli settlers, quote, "terrorists." For more, we're joined now by NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Hi, Daniel.

DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.

CHANG: OK. So what exactly happened in this standoff in the West Bank?

ESTRIN: It began at the start of the week. Settlers set up a tent in front of two Palestinian homes on the edge of a village called Qusra. They cut off power lines. They cut off and vandalized water pipes to these homes, and the settlers simply stayed outside the homes round the clock for days, and the families were trapped inside. Our NPR producer Nuha Musleh reached one of the Palestinians inside one of the homes, Qusai Abu Ridi.

QUSAI ABU RIDI: (Speaking Arabic).

ESTRIN: He says they are still besieged. They lack electricity, water, food, medicine. And his brother who owns the house is a U.S. citizen. He lives in Ohio, and he's been appealing to the U.S. embassy to help.

CHANG: OK. And explain how the U.S. has helped, at least so far, or tried to.

ESTRIN: Well, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, posted on X that the U.S. asked Israel to send in forces to remove that group of settlers, and he called those Israeli settlers, as you mentioned, terrorists - very unusual language for Huckabee. He's a pro-Israel conservative. He believes Jews have a biblical right to settle the West Bank. Now, Israel did send in the army in the end to dismantle the settler tent. But the army says it only detained one Israeli at the scene, and residents say that settlers are still there in the vicinity of the village. So this is still an ongoing saga. But activists say that this is a tactic that they have seen in recent weeks, where settlers have besieged a home, they try to take it over, and soldiers turn a blind eye.

CHANG: A blind eye. Wait, so what is the Israeli government saying about all of this?

ESTRIN: The Israeli army says they have sent more troops to the area, and Israeli officials are condemning this incident. But they say that the issue is being overblown. I spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign policy adviser. His name is Ophir Falk, and he said that settlers - the settlers in this case - he called them vigilantes. And he said that these incidents are sporadic compared to the frequency of Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

The United Nations has documented that since the Gaza War began, 44 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, and more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed there. And rights groups have documented just how little Israel has done to prosecute settler violence against Palestinians. One group told me that this year alone, the Israeli police has only pressed charges in three of those cases.

CHANG: Wow. Well, can we just talk about the big picture here? Because Israeli settlements are expanding in the occupied West Bank, which is land that Palestinians claim. Say more about what is happening there.

ESTRIN: We have seen dramatic changes in the West Bank since October 7, 2023, the Hamas attack on Israel. We've seen whole populations of Palestinian communities displaced due to Israeli settler intimidation. We've seen scores of these small, rural Palestinian hamlets displaced. Now we're seeing these threats to homes on the edge of villages. We're also seeing an acceleration of settlement building in recent months. And activists I've spoke to think that the current Israeli government, which is very pro-settlement, is racing against the clock in case they lose power when Israel goes to elections in October.

CHANG: That is NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Daniel.

ESTRIN: You're welcome.

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