US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee meets with West Bank residents amid settler violence

United States ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has met with several local officials and residents in the occupied West Bank, including Palestinian Americans attacked in violent Israeli settler pogroms.

The diplomat said on Saturday that the Israeli government has a “responsibility” to ensure the safety of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank after a sharp rise in pogroms.

“One of the messages that we have been sending and we will continue to send is that people in these communities have a right to live with a level of security and safety, and that the government has a responsibility to make sure that happens,” Huckabee told reporters on Saturday.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Turmus Aya in the occupied West Bank, said that Huckabee not only met local officials, “but also Palestinian Americans who live in the village of Turmus Aya and have been seeing firsthand the effects of settler pogroms and violence, part of the whole escalation by settlers in the occupied West Bank”.

“They want the US ambassador to relay the message that this is systematic violence being practised against Palestinians, that it’s continuing and that they need actual change,” Ibrahim said, noting that settlers in the area “wrote slogans not just against Palestinians, but also against him [Huckabee]”.

One person Huckabee met was US-Palestinian Ruwan Alqam, who relocated to Turmus Aya from the US state of Texas with her family four months ago.

But every time Alqam’s family leaves their occupied West Bank home, “we’re hit with roadblock after roadblock, settlers after settlers”, she told Al Jazeera, shortly after attending a morning meeting with Huckabee.

On a recent day trip to Nablus, the family was unable to return home as Israeli settlers attacked their car with rocks, Alqam said.

“They’re not being held accountable for their actions – endangering Palestinians is a fun activity for them,” Alqam said of the settlers, describing the violence committed as “not a minority” among Israelis.

Huckabee was “very receptive” to the experiences of Turmus Aya residents, Alqam said, adding: “We are in desperate need of attention here.”

‘Severe consequences’

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Huckabee said: “Our clear message is that crime is crime, terror is terror. When people do it, they should have an expectation that they will have severe consequences”.

Meanwhile, Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, told Al Jazeera that Huckabee’s visit to the West Bank is “largely symbolic … because his visit, as much as it is covered by the media, is not going to change American policy”.

Huckabee has labelled some of the settlers committing violence as “terrorists”, which is a “clear message”, Pinkas said, particularly coming from an evangelical Christian who “believes in the Jewish rights over the West Bank”.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration “doesn’t seem to care enough” about settler pogroms or the rights of Palestinians for it to “actually pressure the Israeli government”, Pinkas said.

Settler pogroms in the West Bank have ⁠risen sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, the most right wing in Israel’s history, took office in late 2022.