Trump's Ambassador to Israel Calls Settler Siege of Ohio Man's Home "Terrorists," as New Outposts Go Up Elsewhere in West Bank

A Palestinian American from Ohio flew to Israel on Sunday, August 16, trying to reach his own house. He couldn't get in. Israeli settlers had it surrounded.

Loui Ridi's home sits on the outskirts of Qusra, a village about 10 miles south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Since Sunday, August 9, according to the Associated Press, settlers set up camp around his house and two neighboring homes. They cut power lines, vandalized water pipes, threw stones, and blocked residents from leaving. Ridi's brother, Qusai Abu Rida, holed up inside with his own teenage son to defend the property as food and water ran out.

NPR spoke with Abu Rida through a producer in the West Bank. He said the families had no electricity, water, food, or medicine for days. His brother, stuck in Ohio, had been begging the U.S. embassy for help.

He got an unusually loud answer.

Huckabee Calls It Terrorism

Mike Huckabee, the Trump administration's ambassador to Israel, posted on X calling the siege a "horrific act of terror" and labeling the settlers "Israeli terrorists." Huckabee is a longtime ally of Israel's settler movement who has said in the past that Jews have a right, including a biblical one, to live in the West Bank.

Huckabee pushed back on critics who said Washington wasn't doing enough. "The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has been VERY involved & the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this," he wrote, according to Fox News. He said the White House hadn't needed to intervene directly because his team had already kept Washington briefed.

Israel's military called the siege "illegal, reprehensible, and unacceptable" on Tuesday, August 11, and declared the area a closed military zone, according to Breitbart and PBS. Troops later dismantled two illegal outposts near Qusra and detained one Israeli. No word yet on whether that person has been charged with anything.

Qusra's mayor, Abdel Azim Wadi, said Israeli forces evacuated seven homes total to take up positions in the village. The settlers were pushed off their outposts but, according to Wadi, remain elsewhere in the village. As of Thursday, August 13, families still weren't allowed to return to their houses even after the military reportedly told soldiers to let them stay put.

"No one is allowed to enter. Even food and water are prohibited from reaching those besieged," a neighboring resident, Yasser Ahmad, told the AP.

Israel's Response: Fringe Vigilantes, Not Policy

A senior Israeli official from the prime minister's office told Fox News that Israel "doesn't accept vigilantes or any form of violence by juvenile delinquents." The official cited numbers: over 350 investigations opened in the first quarter of 2026, leading to 35 arrests. The IDF sent an additional battalion to the region.

That official also pushed back hard on comparisons to Palestinian violence, calling attempts to draw "a false symmetry between sporadic violence and Palestinian terror" hypocritical, and pointed to more than 300 Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews in May 2026 alone.

Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told NPR the settlers involved are "vigilantes" and said the incidents are sporadic compared to the volume of Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Attacks against Israelis in the West Bank are real, and the UN has documented 44 Israeli deaths there since the Gaza war began.

But the same UN tally, cited by NPR, puts Palestinian deaths in the West Bank over that period above 1,000. Rights groups told NPR that Israeli police have opened few prosecutions against settler violence, though the reporting did not include a specific conviction count.

A Pattern, Not an Isolated Incident

This wasn't a one-off. Al Jazeera reported that on Sunday, August 16, separate groups of settlers pitched tents for two new illegal outposts near Ramallah, in the Wadi Zeytun area near Umm Safa and in the nearby village of Burqa. If completed, that would bring the outpost count around those two villages to six. Al Jazeera's Tharwat Shakra reported settlers have already seized roughly 4,700 of Umm Safa's 4,800 dunams and 10,000 of Burqa's 12,000 dunams.

The same day, Al Jazeera reported settlers attacked a home in Beit Imrin, north of Nablus, and detained the people inside before Israeli forces arrived and arrested nine people from that house. Soldiers reportedly blocked Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances from reaching the area and confiscated vehicle keys. None of that has been independently verified by other outlets in this set of reporting.

The West Bank holds roughly 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers, according to Astro Awani. Most of the world, including UN bodies, considers the settlements illegal under international law on military occupations. Israel disputes that framing and treats the territory as disputed rather than occupied.

Israeli police haven't said whether the one settler detained near Qusra faces any charges. Ridi, after landing in Israel Sunday, still hadn't confirmed he'd gotten into his own house. Whether Israeli authorities move beyond detentions to actual prosecutions, and whether the new outposts near Umm Safa and Burqa get dismantled the way the Qusra ones were, remains to be seen.