In a striking turn of events in the long-turbulent occupied West Bank, Israeli military forces launched a fresh operation against extremist rogue settlers on Thursday, responding to unusually blunt public condemnation from the United States ambassador. The operation comes on the same day that Israeli leadership inaugurated a new settlement built on the site of an outpost evacuated more than two decades ago, laying bare the deep internal and diplomatic tensions surrounding settlement expansion in the occupied territory.
The crisis began last Sunday, when settlers in the area near Nablus imposed a total blockade on multiple Palestinian residential properties, including a home belonging to a United States citizen. Trapped residents report being completely cut off from access to food, drinking water, and critical essential supplies for days. In an extraordinary rebuke from a figure long known as one of the most vocal American backers of Israeli settlement activity, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a scathing public denunciation of the siege on social platform X.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian pastor who has spent decades rejecting Palestinian statehood and openly supporting Jewish settlement across the West Bank, wrote that there is “no excuse for such thuggish behaviour”. He added that the intimidation and harassment targeting the besieged Palestinian families amounted to a horrific act of terror, calling the actions “disgusting”. The ambassador also confirmed that Israeli authorities launched the new operation at the explicit request of the US government, Israel’s closest and most critical international ally.
The Israeli military confirmed that it deployed forces to the Qusra region for a second time overnight, dismantling two unauthorized settler outposts and taking one Israeli settler into custody. But local witnesses report that the majority of the settlers who participated in the blockade remain in surrounding areas near the Palestinian village. Aisha Hassan, a resident trapped inside one of the besieged homes, told reporters that the entire area remains completely sealed off, with no way for humanitarian supplies to reach trapped residents. “The settlers are spread out in nearby areas on the adjacent hill. So far, no one has been able to get food and supplies to us because the area is completely sealed off by the army,” Hassan said.
Abdel Azim Wadi, mayor of the Palestinian village of Qusra, added that the Israeli military has issued temporary eviction orders for the blockaded Palestinian homes amid its operation to remove the rogue settlers. A day before the overnight deployment, troops had already dismantled most of a makeshift settler tent at the site, but settlers remained defiantly in place, using only blankets for shelter.
The parallel push to remove the rogue blockade and inaugurate a new settlement underscores the conflicting political pressures facing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government, just weeks ahead of October 27 national elections that current polling indicate will be extremely close. On Thursday, top Israeli officials including Defence Minister Israel Katz gathered to celebrate the reopening of the Ganim settlement in the northern West Bank, which was originally dismantled more than 20 years ago as part of a national disengagement plan designed to reduce friction with Palestinian populations by withdrawing from heavily Palestinian-populated areas. That 2005 plan also saw Israel withdraw all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, which later fell under the control of the militant group Hamas.
The unprecedented criticism from Huckabee has sent shockwaves through the Israeli settlement movement, even among settlement leaders who recognize the ambassador as one of their most stalwart American allies. Oded Revivi, former head of the council for the moderate Jerusalem-area settlement of Efrat, argued that the rebuke from such a reliable friend should serve as a wake-up call for the entire settlement movement. “It is impossible to slap a leftist label on Ambassador Huckabee, the greatest friend of the settlement enterprise in the US,” Revivi said. “If a true friend like Huckabee has to bang on the table, then all of us need to stop and ask how it happened that we lost our way, and fix it immediately.”
Settler violence against Palestinian communities across the West Bank has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Currently, more than 500,000 Israeli settlers reside in West Bank settlements that are widely recognized as illegal under international law, alongside an estimated 3 million Palestinian residents of the occupied territory.