U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee denounced a group of Israeli settlers who laid siege to a Palestinian home in the West Bank, describing them as “terrorists.”
Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian Christian activist, called attention to a mob of Israeli settlers laying siege to the house in the West Bank village of Qusra, which is owned by an American citizen. After first criticizing Huckabee and the U.S. Embassy for a seeming lack of interest, Hassan then described the White House as having “intervened” in the case. Huckabee rejected both charges as a “lie.” In clarifying the U.S. position on the matter, the outspoken pro-Israel ambassador made one of his most stringent condemnations of Israeli settler activity.
The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Huckabee said, “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.”
He rejected Ihab’s characterization of the White House having “intervened” in the situation, “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,” Huckabee said, adding that claims he or the embassy “doesn’t care or hasn’t done anything is simply untrue.”
Huckabee’s harsh words for Israeli settlers are a departure from his previous support of the settler movement. For nearly his entire political career, Huckabee has been one of its most outspoken and prominent supporters in the U.S., even previously refusing to use the term “settler” and denying the existence of a Palestinian people.
“There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria,” he said during a visit to an Israeli settlement in 2017. “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities. They’re neighborhoods. They’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation. The only occupiers were the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Turks, the Brits, the Romans. They were occupiers. The Jews are the occupants.”
Huckabee has had to scale back this rhetoric in his role as ambassador to Israel to align with the Trump administration’s stance. He’s criticized settler violence previously, most notably last year when he visited the Palestinian Christian neighborhood of Taybeh after it was attacked and its church burned by Israeli settlers.
“To commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship — it is an act of terror, and it’s a crime,” he said at the time.
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Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has reached new heights after Oct. 7, 2023, with the settler movement taking advantage of the chaos to form mobs and attack Palestinian locals. The United Nations found that settler attacks have risen sharply every year since 2023, with 1,835 settler attacks against Palestinians documented in 2025 alone. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since 2023, with dozens of these killed in settler attacks. Dozens of Israelis have been killed in the West Bank over the same period.
The Israeli settler movement has an oftentimes contentious relationship with the Israeli government, sometimes clashing with security forces and causing diplomatic headaches for Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the Israel Defense Forces and other security forces often provide cover for settlers, inflaming tensions in the area and with Washington.
