CHICAGO: It is a great start, but the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee will have to do more than simply tell settler extremists not to take Palestinian Americans’ land in the West Bank.
Israeli settlers, often with the backing of the Israel Defense Forces, have accelerated the annexation of land throughout the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem in recent years, targeting Palestinian homes, farms, and water wells, and killing and injuring many Palestinians, including several American citizens.
It was reports of settlers attacking residents of the all-Christian village of Taybeh and burning their homes, cars, farmland, and olive trees that caught Huckabee’s attention.
Huckabee, a Baptist minister and the first evangelical Christian to serve as US ambassador to Israel, declared that settlers found to have taken part in the ongoing siege of homes in the West Bank village of Qusra could face consequences both in Israel and from Washington.
“Thou shalt not steal,” Huckabee told Reuters, citing the Ten Commandments. “You don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you.”
