Israeli Settlers Besiege a Palestinian-American's West Bank Home for Nine Days, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee — a Champion of the Settlement Movement — Calls Them "Israeli Terrorists"

August 18, 2026

Beginning Sunday, August 9, 2026, dozens of Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in Ras al-Ayn, on the edge of the West Bank village of Qusra near Nablus, pitching a tent outside, throwing stones, cutting water and electricity lines and blocking the roads. Fifteen people were trapped inside as food and water ran out. One of the houses belongs to Loui Ridi, a 46-year-old Palestinian American who grew up in Qusra and now lives in Toledo, Ohio; he watched the siege on his home security cameras for seven nights before boarding a flight from Detroit and reaching the house on the evening of August 17. On August 13, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — an outspoken supporter of Jewish settlement in the West Bank who as a matter of practice calls the territory Judea and Samaria — posted that the embassy had asked the IDF and Israel Police to "remove the Israeli terrorists doing this," calling the siege a "horrific act of terror" with "no excuse for such thuggish behaviour." He simultaneously defended the broader settler movement, drawing a line between "settlers" and a small minority of "unsettlers." The rebuke was unusually sharp for the ambassador, and came six days after Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called on him to resign over what Van Hollen described as a pattern of failing to defend American citizens killed or mistreated in the West Bank — nine Americans killed there since January 2022, with no one held responsible. Washington privately pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to condemn the siege publicly; he did not, two months out from an Israeli election in which settler voters matter to his coalition. On August 17, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the siege "unacceptable" and urged the Trump administration to compel Israel to protect Palestinian civilians.