Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, was in the West Bank town of Turmusayya, where the mayor estimates that 80% of the population hold American citizenship. Huckabee acknowledged that their citizenship status isn’t protecting them from Israeli settler violence. “I’m very aware that a lot of the American people who live in Turmusayya and other communities across this region are not enjoying the life they deserve to live, not enjoying it in a peaceful way,” he said in remarks on Saturday to a gathering in a private home in the town. “It’s a life that is disturbed by people who have created extraordinary challenges that are unfair and illegal.” Turmusayya is surrounded by Israeli settlements, and its residents have been repeatedly subjected to harassment and violent assaults by the settlers.
“I hope you recognize that I’ve been very clear in public statements saying that when someone takes over another person’s home, if there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them; if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act,” he continued. “But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror. I’ve been criticized a little bit for calling that terror, but terror is when a person is forced to change his or her behavior because of the behavior of someone else who is trying to use intimidation to make them afraid to live in their own homes, to make their children afraid to play in their own yards, to be able to walk their own streets.”
He didn’t offer much that the U.S. embassy could do other than to press the Israeli government to do something to address the violence. “I’ve told the government of Israel, and I’ve told our people back in Washington, that there needs to be an equal disbursement of justice for every kind of crime, without distinction,” he said.
Huckabee told reporters separately that it was in the Israeli government’s interest to take action against those carrying out “criminal behavior and terrorism,” and that a “tiny group of little marauders,” who he claimed numbered a few hundred people, were damaging the country’s reputation.
Yasser Alkam, a Palestinian American and a municipality spokesperson, disputed Huckabee’s characterization that only a few hundred settlers were carrying out violence against Palestinians. There were thousands, he said, not hundreds. “The United States does have the power to pressure Israel to at least arrest these settlers, who are known to the authorities,” he told reporters. “They can identify them, one by one, and arrest them, if they want to, with the right amount of pressure from the United States embassy and the United States administration.”
