How violent West Bank settlers are threatening Israel’s alliance with America

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Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, is a Christian Zionist who believes that Israel is biblically entitled to all of the Holy Land. He’s pretty much the last person you’d expect to condemn Israeli conduct in the West Bank, where settlers have spent decades using a combination of construction, coercion, and outright violence to push Palestinians off their own land.

Yet earlier this month, Huckabee went out of his way to denounce the behavior of some settlers — describing them as “band of terrorists” who had committed “horrible activities of criminal nature.”

Huckabee’s surprising outrage stems, in part, from their recent choice of victims. Last month, settler extremists besieged three Palestinian homes in the village of Qusra, including one belonging to American citizen Lou Ridi. About two weeks later, masked settlers beat up a NBC News crew while they attempted to interview Aida Ahmed Abdullah, a Palestinian who had herself had been forced from her home by settler aggression.

But Huckabee’s outrage reflects something deeper. Settler terrorism, once relatively uncommon, has exploded in severity in recent years — with wink-nudge support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The violence is so egregious, and so indefensible, that retired Israeli generals have compared the settlers to Nazis and demanded action to stop them. In mid-September, the INSS — Israel’s top national security think tank — issued a strategic alert warning that “Jewish terrorism” had become a national crisis and even an existential threat to Israel’s future.

“As history teaches us, democracies that fail to restrain radical forces within them do not survive,” the alert argues.

In Washington, settler terrorism against Palestinians has flipped the Israel debate on its head. Congressional Democrats, who have long been divided over the Gaza war, have come together to support legislation that would impose sanctions on Israeli politicians and corporations implicated in the violence. The Trump administration, the most pro-settlement White House in American history, has very conspicuously stood aside as Canada and European nations implemented sanctions of their own.

For now, the settlers are mostly getting away with it — because the government wants them to.

For now, the settlers are mostly getting away with it — because the government wants them to. While basically all Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow, the current Netanyahu government includes coalition partners unusually aligned with their most radical goals: the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. So long as they see settler terrorism as a useful tactic toward that end, and have the ability to stymie preventive measures and block accountability, the attacks will continue.

But if Netanyahu loses Israel’s election in October, and Democrats retake the White House in 2028, things might change dramatically. The political stars could align for a serious effort to change what Israel is doing in the West Bank — not just attempting to merely slow settler violence, but also challenge the broader apparatus of occupation that makes it possible.