The U.S. ambassador to Israel denounced on Saturday a rising tide of Israeli extremist attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, describing the assailants as “terrorists” at a rare meeting with Palestinian Americans in the territory.
The comments by the ambassador, Mike Huckabee, came amid escalating Jewish settler attacks on Palestinians. Last month, settlers besieged the home of an American citizen near Qusra in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, drawing international condemnation.
Mr. Huckabee held a town hall with the mostly Palestinian American residents of Turmus Aya who described life under Israeli military rule, as well as a climate of fear and intimidation created by Israeli settler attacks.
The ambassador said he was “deeply grieved” by their stories, according to a transcript provided by the embassy. He added that he would exert “pressure in order to get some resolution to things you’ve brought up today,” without elaborating.
It was an unusual meeting for Mr. Huckabee, an evangelical pastor and former Arkansas governor whose personal politics have long aligned with Israel’s right-wing settler movement. Several Turmus Aya residents said they could not recall a similar visit by a U.S. ambassador to Israel in recent years, though other U.S. officials have visited before.
The ambassador’s remarks left at least some Palestinian Americans at the meeting disappointed, saying that while he had listened and offered strong words, he was unable to promise concrete change.
“There’s a lot of pain, because I don’t know to whom we can turn at this point, said Yasser Alqam, a U.S. citizen and local official who helped coordinate Mr. Huckabee’s arrival. “We pinned a lot of hopes on the ambassador’s visit. But he didn’t give us satisfactory answers.”
A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Huckabee’s remarks.
Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have surged over the past three years, alongside the Israeli campaign against the militant group Hamas in Gaza.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been injured during settler attacks since the beginning of 2026, according to the United Nations. Groups of Israeli settlers — often protected by Israeli soldiers — have torched and vandalized buildings, as well as assaulted Palestinian residents.
As the occupying power, the Israeli military is responsible for upholding law and order in the territory. But Israeli rights groups argue that few are prosecuted for the assaults, and say that extremists have largely acted with impunity. Yesh Din, a rights monitor, said just 3 percent of investigations tracked by the group between 2005 and 2025 led to full or partial convictions.
Palestinians and Israeli rights groups also say Israeli troops frequently look the other way when settler attacks happen or at times participate in the assaults.
Mr. Huckabee said he had urged the Israeli government to seek “equal disbursement of justice for every kind of crime.” He suggested that the U.S. Embassy in Israel had limited sway to curb the violence, although he could “influence and call attention to what needs to be corrected.”
“My view is that crime is crime and terror is terror, and it ought to be a consequence to the full extent of the law,” Mr. Huckabee said. Pressed by reporters on whether Israel was doing enough to bring the perpetrators to justice, Mr. Huckabee declined to make an assessment.
After another violent attack in the town of Qusra last weekend, where settlers sieged the house in August, Mr. Netanyahu issued a rare condemnation of the violence and said he expected law enforcement to apprehend the perpetrators.
On Thursday, the Israeli police said it had arrested more than 15 people in recent days for involvement in different attacks across the West Bank, including in Qusra.
About three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank alongside some 500,000 Israeli settlers. Thousands of Palestinian-Americans reside in relatively well-heeled Palestinian towns like Turmus Aya — some year-round, others staying for the summer with their families.
Many had long hoped their U.S. passports would offer some protection from Israeli measures in the occupied territory. But in recent years, they too have felt Israel’s tightening grip on the West Bank and encountered ever more brazen attacks by Israeli extremists.
In the summer of 2023, dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Turmus Aya and other nearby Palestinian communities, setting fires that damaged dozens of cars, buildings and farmland.
Last year, Israeli soldiers gunned down Amer Rabee, a Palestinian American teenager from Turmus Aya, shooting him multiple times in his upper body. The Israeli military accused the teenager and two of his friends of hurling rocks toward the highway and endangering civilians. His family and one of the surviving boys refuted that account.
Mr. Alqam, the local official, said he was disappointed to hear the ambassador suggest that the attackers were a small minority, and he rejected that the United States had limited power over Israel. He noted that, soon after returning to office in 2025, President Trump had removed sanctions that were imposed on extremist Israeli settlers by the Biden administration.
“The United States does have the power to pressure Israel to at least arrest these settlers, who are known to the authorities,” Mr. Alqam said. “They can identify them, one by one.”
The town hall was hosted at the home of Sameer Barakat, a Palestinian American who moved back to the West Bank from Dallas earlier this year. Mr. Barakat said his home had already been attacked with rocks, leading him to place barbed wire on the exterior.
“What I want to say to Mr. Huckabee is that we need protection for Americans here,” Mr. Barakat said ahead of the town hall. “They are protected everywhere except in Palestine.” Your responsibility is to protect us.”
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