Sept. 5 (UPI) — U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Saturday condemned escalating settler attacks in the occupied West Bank and labeled the perpetrators “terrorists.”
Huckabee was speaking to a group of mostly Palestinian Americans in the town of Turmus Aya in efforts to “de-escalate tension.”
“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.
“But it extends beyond a criminal act,” he added in remarks shared by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. “It’s an act of terror.”
U.S. ambassadors usually only refer to Palestinian militants as terrorists. Last month, Huckabee used the label to refer to settlers who besieged the home of a Palestinian American in Qusra.
Huckabee said he’s been “criticized a little bit for calling that terror.”
But, he added, “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.”
More than 1,040 Palestinians have been injured in settler attacks since the beginning of the year, the United Nations said in a report.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem, said that large-scale settler attacks “continue with virtually no accountability for these crimes.”
“Israeli security forces have frequently failed to protect Palestinians from settler attacks and, in some cases, have reportedly facilitated or participated in such violence,” he added in a statement. “Israel, as the occupying power, must ensure that the civilian population is protected, and perpetrators are held to account.”
After meeting with Huckabee, one local official said some Palestinian Americans were left disappointed.
“There’s a lot of pain, because I don’t know to whom we can turn at this point,” Yasser Alqam told The New York Times.
“We pinned a lot of hopes on the ambassador’s visit,” added Alqam, who is a U.S. citizen. “But he didn’t give us satisfactory answers.”
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