In a rare statement weighing in on Israeli policy in the West Bank, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that he had asked Jerusalem to “aggressively investigate the murder” of a Palestinian-American.
Saif Musalat was allegedly beaten to death by settlers in the village of Sinjil near Ramallah last week.
“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was just 20 yrs old,” Huckabee wrote in a post on X.
It appeared to be one of the first times Huckabee has commented on rampant settler violence in the West Bank, though he avoided using the term or characterizing the killing as part of a broader phenomenon.
A devout evangelical Christian, Huckabee has long expressed support for Israel annexing the West Bank and has pushed back against calls for scaling back Israel’s presence there.
Christian Palestinian activists have been circulating a petition in recent days urging Huckabee to call out settler violence that has targeted the Christian village of Taybeh.
But it was Friday’s attack that left Musalat and another Palestinian dead, which led Huckabee to break his silence on the issue.
Musalat, a resident of Tampa, Florida, who was visiting family in the West Bank for the summer, was found beaten to death. The body of his friend Mohammed al-Shalabi was found hours later nearby with a gunshot wound and signs of torture, according to his family.
While two Israeli minors were arrested following the attack, neither of them is a murder suspect, and they were subsequently released to house arrest.
A Palestinian was also arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct, but a military court judge ordered his release on Tuesday, blasting the police’s handling of the case after a law enforcement representative claimed to not even know that two Palestinians had been killed in Friday’s attack.
Hours earlier, a CNN reporter said that his crew was set upon by violent settlers while in the West Bank this week to report on Musalat’s killing, as reports of brazen Jewish extremist assaults in the territory continued to spiral.
A growing number of centrist, pro-Israel Democrats have also been condemning the phenomenon.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement on Tuesday blasting Musalat’s “shocking and appalling” killing.
He called on the Israeli government to investigate the killing, adding that “the rise in violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank directed at Palestinian civilians is completely and totally unacceptable.”
“The Trump administration cannot continue to turn a blind eye to what is happening in the West Bank if it is truly committed to finding a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinian people,” Jeffries added.
Hours earlier, another prominent moderate Democrat — Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin — weighed in on Musalat’s killing, saying he was the fifth American to have been killed by settler violence this year alone.
“It’s hard to understand this lack of accountability by the Netanyahu government as anything other than tacit approval by the state,” Slotkin said.
Musalat’s family is demanding that the US State Department probe his death, though such a decision is unlikely.
The Biden administration never took such a step following the killings of American citizens, including prominent journalists Shireen Abu Akleh, and the Trump administration would be unlikely to launch an investigation that would demonstrate a lack of faith in Israel’s legal system.