Huckabee calls settler attacks in Turmus Ayya acts of terror

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee stood in Turmus Ayya on Saturday, 5 September, and called attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians "acts of terror." He said crime is crime and terror is terror, and that those who carry out either "should have an expectation that they will have severe consequences." The Israeli government, he added, has a responsibility to keep targeted communities safe.

Turmus Ayya sits near Ramallah. Mayor Nawwaf Zaghoul said about 80 percent of the town's roughly 3,000 residents hold U.S. citizenship. Huckabee met families of Palestinian Americans killed by settlers and residents who described roadblocks, burned fields and smashed property. One of them, Ruwan Alqam, who moved from Texas four months ago, said every trip out of the house runs into settlers and barriers. She told reporters the ambassador had been "very receptive" and that the town needed attention.

Huckabee is the first evangelical Christian to hold the Tel Aviv post. He uses the biblical names Judea and Samaria for the West Bank, language the Israeli government uses and the U.S. government as a whole has not adopted. He has visited the nearby settlement of Shiloh twice since 2025. That record is why Saturday's vocabulary stood out. U.S. officials usually reserve the word "terrorist" for Palestinian militants. Huckabee applied it to settlers who, in his list, plant flags on land that is not theirs, burn cars, torch a mosque, or vandalise a home.

He also narrowed the target. The violent men, he said, are "a tiny group of little marauders," "a few hundred" people, "a few hundred too many." He quoted scripture: do not steal, do not kill, do not covet. The political move is to separate those few hundred from the wider settler population and from the Israeli state, while still telling that state to prosecute them.

The visit follows weeks of unrest. In Qusra last month, settlers surrounded homes including one owned by a Palestinian American. In Bazariya, residents said settlers burned a mosque and painted "Huckabee regards from the terrorists" in Hebrew on a wall. On Saturday he said he was "glad they admitted it," and that they still represent a small minority. The UN humanitarian office has recorded a sharp rise in settler attacks since the 7 October 2023 assault on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed.

Huckabee said Washington is working on a mechanism to curb the violence and that U.S. citizens in the West Bank are "our responsibility." He also denied that Israel is planning to force Palestinians out of Gaza. The two sentences sit side by side: protect Americans in Area villages, reject a charge of expulsion further south.

Whether Saturday changes anything on the ground depends on Israeli prosecutors and on the army units that police the roads around Turmus Ayya. An ambassador can name a crime. He cannot file the charge sheet. The families he met will measure the trip by whether the next harvest is burned. The few hundred he described will measure it by whether anyone is actually arrested.

For a diplomat who has spent his public life as a friend of the settlement project, the word "terror" is a costly one. He used it anyway, in a town that holds American passports and sits inside a map he still calls by its biblical name.