The West Bank town of Turmus Ayya has been plagued by settler violence since 2020. More than 80 percent of residents are Americans who feel abandoned – despite Ambassador Mike Huckabee's recent visit
September 18th, 17PM September 18th, 20PM
Samir Juma'a Hazmeh's four-story house in Turmus Ayya overlooks the fields that surround the town. From his balcony, we can see some of the town's 18,000 dunams of land (roughly 4,500 acres). The land is lush, perfect for growing olives, figs and citrus. The August heat ripens the olives, just before harvest season.
Hazmeh's house is opulent, like many in this West Bank town filled with villas only a 25-minute drive north of Ramallah, where American flags fly from the roofs of many houses.
A car approaches the house. A man gets out and walks into the inner courtyard. It's Hazmeh's neighbor; he's flying to Texas tomorrow, and if settlers break in while he's gone, the neighbor says, someone needs to get inside.
Most of the houses in Turmus Ayya are multi-story villas, many of which fly the American flag. Credit: Itay Cohen
"Under American law, the U.S. Embassy and government must protect their citizens wherever they are in the world," says Hamzeh. "Sometimes I think: Where are you, Trump? Look at how an American passport is treated here." A few days before Haaretz visited Turmus Ayya, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee came to hear them out.
Hazmeh, a retiree who splits his time between the U.S. and the West Bank, hosted Huckabee at his house. From his balcony, Huckabee surveyed the land and Emek Shiloh Farm, the illegal outpost on the edge of the olive grove, which residents say is responsible for the constant attacks on the village. The outpost, known alternatively as HaNekuda BaEmek in Hebrew, was founded by Amishav Melet in 2024 on land classified as Area B by the Oslo Accords.
The edge of the territory taken by the outpost lies only 300 meters from the town. Melet – whose brother, Benayahu Melet, was shot dead in July during a clash in Tell – is said to be the ringleader of settler attacks and land grabs. During Huckabee's visit, he drove an ATV past the house, even though it was Shabbat and the outposts claim to be religiously observant.
The U.S. ambassador took out his camera and recorded a video, saying he would show it to President Donald Trump directly.
Speaking to residents afterward, Huckabee didn't mince words. He said the acts of settlers who have seized homes, attacked residents, burned cars and torched a mosque go beyond criminal acts. "It's an act of terror," said Huckabee.
Yet he stopped short of calling for action. He said he blamed the terrorism on a "minority," and said the U.S. Embassy cannot investigate or prosecute; it can only express its concerns to the Israeli government, and press for proper investigations and prosecutions.
As we survey the area, Melet appears with his flock: like a specter, walking through the grove, slowly closing in on the house, kicking up dirt and throwing pebbles at the unruly goats.
Awad Abu Samra, a municipal council member who documents settler attacks, films his every step. The footage is shared to a WhatsApp group. As a councilmember, he is in constant contact with the U.S. Embassy and with the Palestinian authorities in Nablus and Ramallah that liaise with Israel, sending videos of attacks, which have become commonplace.
"The provocations are almost daily: arson, theft and looting. Homes have been looted in the eastern part of the town and in its northern area," Abu Samra says.
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the IDF Spokesperson's Unit did not respond to requests for comment by publication.
What it means to be American in Palestine
For residents who split their time between the United States and the West Bank, their American passport is only worth something until they land in Tel Aviv.
"If you carry a hawiyya [Palestinian ID card], even if you carry an American passport, or German, or French, or any kind of passport, it means you are a Palestinian," says Wadi Alqam Abu Awad, also a dual citizen. "They don't recognize the other citizenship you carry. They say, as long as you carry the hawiyya, you are Palestinian."
Since the U.S. doesn't recognize Palestine, the U.S. passport is all they have, Abu Awad adds. "If you, the United States, do not recognize Palestinian passports, then what are we? We're only U.S. citizens – the country meant to help us.
"We're not Palestinians anymore, because you don't recognize a Palestinian state. We don't have Israeli passports. The only passport we have that the U.S. acknowledges is the American one. So help us."
Hassan Shukri, a neurologist based in Syracuse, New York, was born in Turmus Ayya and has lived in New York since 1991. He was napping at home during a visit last summer when a knock at the door woke him. His wife answered. It was Israeli soldiers.
"I said, What's going on? They said, 'We need to take the house,'" Shukri says in a phone call from his practice in New York.
Shukri says they gave them one hour to pack up and leave. They refused to say why and for how long. Shukri went to his brother's house on the other side of town.
Only after media reports and pressure from Washington, which Shukri said he wasn't aware of at the time, did the soldiers leave after a few hours.
He said this isn't the first time the military has entered his house. "Last year, I wasn't there, but I had a camera outside my house. I saw someone force the main entrance, and three jeeps with 10 to 15 soldiers entered. They forced into the main door."
Shukri says he was never given reasons for the military entering his house. He says it's a jarring feeling: In the United States, he has close relationships with Jews and Israelis, including many patients, and yet here, he is treated as expendable.
"I'm lucky to be an American citizen. What about people who don't have American citizenship?"
Abu Awad was born in Turmus Ayya when it was under Jordanian control. He immigrated to the United States as a young man, became a civil engineer, and settled in Little Rock, Arkansas. He began dividing his time between Little Rock and Turmus Ayya.
In August 2025, settlers broke into his farmhouse, set it on fire and graffitied the Hebrew words "Revenge" and "Price Tag" on its walls
Despite the attack, he kept on going. That changed when they broke in again four months ago. They cut the lock on the main gate, put their own lock on it, and stole the generator. "The generator was on top of the building. I don't know how they carried it down. And they stole everything in my farmhouse. They stole the seats, the tables, everything."
Abu Awad contacted Israeli police and the military, who told him to report a complaint at the police station in Sha'ar Binyamin, the closest settler municipality.
"I told [the officer]: Everybody knows who is doing this, who is attacking the farmers, who burns cars, who burns houses. They do nothing to him."
"If a guy or a child throws a stone at an army vehicle, they will turn up the whole village until they get him. But the settlers burned around 15 to 18 farmhouses, and they're cutting thousands of olive trees, and since the 7th of October, they've taken [most of] the land in this village. No one is doing anything."
While escalating Israeli settler violence is often connected to the aftermath of October 7, Yasser Alqam, the town's spokesperson, points to a pogrom in summer 2023 that proves otherwise.
On June 21, 2023, around 250 armed settlers descended into Turmus Ayya and began attacking homes with women and children inside, and setting fires. During the rampage, security forces clashed with local residents. Omar Ketin, a 27-year-old electrician and father of two, was killed by a police officer.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recorded 60 settler attacks in Turmus Ayya between January 2020 and October 2022. From the data, the violence appears to have peaked in 2022 at 18 incidents in a single year, ranging from vandalized vineyards and torched cars to a mob attack on an olive harvest; more than 715 olive trees were cut down, according to the B'Tselem tally.
Abu Awad says the situation has only worsened since October 7. "We have no rights. We can't live peacefully in our houses. Settlers with an ATV, a four-wheel drive, come over to two or three villages and threaten everybody, and nobody can do anything to him."
During Huckabee's visit, Alqam handed him a 13-page file documenting every attack in recent years. "We're Americans. We're like you. In fact, we are paying [Huckabee's] salary," he says. "I thought we got him, or he got the message on that day. But after a while, you listen to his statements again, and nothing changes."
Alqam gives Huckabee a bit of credit – "We have taken the first step in the right direction, which is our ambassador starting to call these people terrorists" – but the spokesperson rejects Huckabee's description of settler terrorism as coming from a small minority.
"We're talking about thousands and thousands of these terrorists who were terrorizing locals even before October 7th. You have groups all over the West Bank. They're not 150 outlaws like [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu claims. There are thousands of them," says Alqam.
Alqam was born in Turmus Ayya and immigrated to the United States in 1987 when he was 17. He went to law school, opened a firm and lived in Anaheim, California, for 35 years. "I lived in the United States longer than I lived here," he says.
Alqam points to a half-constructed building with an Israeli flag on top. He says the owner, an American citizen, began construction but stopped midway due to the never-ending violence. "That's a sign that says this belongs to the settlers now. Do not come close to it. They've taken it over. They seized it," says Alqam.
He then points to a section in the barren grove, flanked by a concrete wall. "That's my personal land. I cannot access it."
"If you try to reach your land, something is going to happen to you. Your car is going to be broken. You're going to be physically beaten. You're going to be shot. Or the army is going to show up and tell you, 'get out of here, this is a closed military zone.' They started using that term, closed military zone, to kick Palestinians out of these areas."
Huckabee's words ring hollow in the face of selective enforcement and collective punishment. "Huckabee said that you reward good behavior and punish bad behavior," Alqam says. "I told him: Your administration did the exact opposite, because the first thing Trump did was remove the sanctions against settlers Biden had put in place."
A few days after Huckabee's visit, any hope for a change on the ground via American diplomatic pressure was already looking moot.
He attacked the U.K.'s decision to ban trade with the settlement, accusing its government of "Jew hate," pushed the Israeli right's narrative of an "imbalance of reporting regarding violence in Judea and Samaria," and made a visit to "Ancient Shiloh."
Meanwhile, a few days after Huckabee called the settlers in the outposts "terrorists," his pro-annexation predecessor, former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman, took a friendly selfie with the man Huckabee called a terrorist only a few days before.
"Amishav is a vegan, a pacifist and a farmer. He wants nothing more than to work the land promised to the Jewish people by God," Friedman wrote on X.
We met Mayor Nawwaf Zaghloul, in his office. In the waiting room, there are photos of Yasser Arafat, maps of the land, and, oddly, a TV looping footage from a dashcam driving through suburban Sarasota, Florida. In Turmus Ayya, America is never too far.
Zaghloul, an American citizen, has been mayor for four months; before that, he exported Palestinian olives and olive oil to the United States. As a boy, he plowed the land. In 1978, when he was 14, a caravan with settlers came to Shiloh. They said they would stay for a week. Since then, the settlement has expanded, seizing land.
Now, hilltop youth and outposts are shutting them out of the land they still own. "We used to reach our lands with permits and coordination," granted by Israel, he says. "Now it's simply closed."
The closure has hit Turmus Ayya hard. For decades, residents working in the United States have sent money home. Instead of putting it into the bank, residents bought land. Its value rose.
Now, much of that land is out of reach, causing great financial loss to residents. They are also barred from accessing land they bought in neighboring villages.
"We are not even asking Huckabee to remove the settlement," the mayor says, referring to nearby Shiloh, a religious Israeli settlement of 6,000 that was established on lands expropriated by Israel in the 1970s from Turmus Ayya and nearby Qaryut. "We are asking them to stop attacking us and allow us to exercise our rights on the land we own."
"I am an American citizen. My sons and daughters are American citizens. Much of our life is there, but one's homeland remains precious. No matter where a person lives or is raised, the homeland remains above all."
Even for those who left Turmus Ayya and have not returned, being American is always conditional.
Nasser Jaber, 42, grew up in Turmus Ayya. Like many others in his generation, he does not plan to move back permanently any time soon. "I would be afraid to go back to my hometown, to my home, because I'm afraid that a settler who recently made aliyah from Brooklyn could go and kill a kid."
Jaber says he had an "American upbringing," and studied an American curriculum at the Quaker high school in Ramallah, as the promise of Oslo fizzled out.
Jaber left for the U.S. in 2001, just before 9/11, as the second intifada was raging. Coming to the United States, he saw a shift in the way Arabs and Palestinians navigated the new political landscape.
"Before 9/11, a lot of them were Republican. Then of course, that completely switched, and they were always trying to find a political outlet for representation."
Jaber began working in disaster relief and worked with the State Department. He is a former founder of the nonprofit The Migrant Kitchen and has been involved in what he calls "gastro-diplomacy," like fellow chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés.
"I was proud to represent the United States in many different places, using food as a tool to bridge cultures, to solve problems," he says.
Things have changed since October 7 and Trump's second term, and he says his American nationality is secondary to him being Palestinian. When returning to the U.S. from Amman in April via John F. Kennedy International Airport, Jaber was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for 45 minutes.
The conversation was about Israel.
"It got to a point where I, an American national, asked them, I'm sorry, are you a service officer of the United States, or are you a service officer of Israel? Why are you asking me about the war? Why are you asking me about social media about Israel? Because there's a narrative being pushed by the administration, particularly by people like Stephen Miller, which says that if you're not loyal to Israel, you're not loyal to America."
'We have nothing to lose'
While U.S. citizens in Turmus Ayya are frustrated with the Trump administration, residents say they're encouraged by the shift in U.S. public opinion.
"We're paying very close attention to the elections, to the Congress people, who's being elected, who's being supported by whom," says Alqam.
Alqam says he isn't afraid to push the American government. "We have nothing to lose. Either sit in your house and wait for a terrorist settler to come and burn your house and burn you alive, or do something about it."
He points to the vineyards. "These are planted on Palestinian stolen land. You know what the grapes are used for? Shiloh Winery."
"It's time to start sanctioning the products from the settlements. Because guess what? If it's sheep, milk, cheese or grapes, where is it coming from? Palestinian stolen land."
Shukri says that with the discourse polarizing the U.S. around Israel and Palestine, he's afraid for his children and grandchildren. He confesses to voting for Trump in 2016 and has questioned his choice.
"It feels that we've veered off course, and I worry about this country's future with rising racism, anti-Islam, and anti-Jewish sentiments. Just look at social media, I'm nearly 70, and honestly, it doesn't impact me much personally, but I am genuinely worried about the younger generations."
Shukri and Hamzeh say they will vote in the U.S. midterms; Alqam plans to cast his midterm ballot online from Turmus Ayya.
Alqam says Palestinians in America are mobilized in a way they weren't before. "Groups of activists are going house to house, to Palestinian houses, registering them to vote and asking them to vote. There's a movement out there."
"My vote matters. That's what every Palestinian should start saying: My vote matters. Even if it's one vote, it matters."
More than 80 percent of its roughly 3,000 year-round residents, like Hazmeh, are American citizens; the population can swell to 12,000 in the summer, when expats return for months-long visits. Those citizens have been asking the U.S. Embassy, the State Department and the Trump administration to intervene and de-escalate the record-setting state-backed settler violence that continues to accelerate across the West Bank.
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