Six settlers face terrorism and arson charges in Deir Dibwan
Ali said three young men ran up the driveway of her home in Deir Dibwan on June 14 carrying bottles of flammable liquid. She told The Guardian they tried to pour the liquid on her as she ran inside and pulled down metal shutters, then set fires to furniture and the building’s exterior while she sheltered inside. The attack came two days after U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee visited the nearby settlement of Shilo, according to The Guardian.
“Thank God I acted fast,” Ali told The Guardian. “If I didn’t do that, I would have been burned alive.” Ali said her father built the house in the 1970s and installed bulletproof glass, and that before he died he made her promise she would not abandon it. She said she has since ringed the home and its olive grove with fences and shutters and has stopped traveling to Ramallah to see friends or swim at the YMCA. “It makes me emotional because this is our land and I’m 60 years old and I decided to retire in my family home,” she said. “And I don’t want to live like this, scared, and not doing my routine.”
Ali said dozens of settlers besieged the house again on June 18. She said a man threatened her online with a video in which he stands near a fence behind her property and says, “The reality on the ground is shouting out what they already understand on their own: the homeowner has returned.”
Israeli prosecutors said they have charged six settlers with “acts of terrorism, arson, sabotage and violent rioting” in Deir Dibwan. The cases are reportedly covered by a gag order, and it is not clear whether they are connected to the attack on Ali’s house, according to The Guardian.
Ali said that when she reported the incident to the U.S. embassy, she was told to report it to local authorities. “If we were a Jewish Israeli American family who they had tried to burn alive, the American ambassador would have been here in two hours,” she said. “But I haven’t been contacted.”
In response to questions from The Guardian, a State Department spokesperson said all U.S. citizens in the West Bank have access to consular services and condemned violence “by any party in the West Bank.” The spokesperson said the department is in “regular dialogue with partners about improving stability and security.” “As the president has clearly stated, the United States does not support Israel annexing the West Bank,” the spokesperson said. “A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region.”
Nine Palestinian Americans have been killed in the West Bank since 2022 by settlers or the Israeli military, according to The Guardian. A year after a Palestinian American from Tampa Bay was beaten to death by Israeli settlers, settlers attacked his family members and friends and a CNN crew at a vigil, the report said.
Yaser Alkam, a semi-retired family law attorney who lived in Anaheim, California, for 35 years, heads the village council in Turmus Ayya. About 80 percent of the village’s residents hold U.S. citizenship, according to The Guardian. Alkam told The Guardian he has asked Huckabee at least four times to visit Turmus Ayya without receiving a response. “He does not even consider that we exist,” Alkam said. “Only in Palestine will you find American citizens invading American citizens for land,” he added. “There is no fight. One side attacks and the other side defends with the limited means that we have.”
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has supported Jewish claims on occupied land, has visited Shilo twice in the last two years, according to The Guardian. During a 2025 visit he told residents, “President Trump loves this land. You are not alone. We stand with you, and so do many around the world. Those who do not stand with you do not stand with God.”
Among those Alkam identified as involved in violence and intimidation is Amishav Melet, whose brother was killed in a clash when settlers marched into another Palestinian village during the previous week, according to The Guardian. Melet has publicly declared he believes Jews should retake all of the West Bank but denied any connection to settler violence. “I have his pictures. And I’m sure he has my pictures and he has my name. He knows me and I know him … And he’s probably waiting for the time to get me,” Alkam said.
Turmus Ayya residents, many of them members of the diaspora in New York, Chicago, and Paterson, New Jersey, return for the summers and fly U.S. flags from their balconies, according to The Guardian. A few hundred metres of land lie between the village and an Israeli outpost, one of several radiating from Shilo across the valley. Residents told The Guardian that at night, settlers roam the village in off-road vehicles and intimidate them with gunshots, screaming, and shining flashlights through windows, and that in one attack settlers spray-painted the word “Revenge” on the side of a house. Residents noted that U.S. dollars, through Jewish charities and the U.S. budget for the Israeli military, have helped support settlement activity in the area.
Ghaith Odeh grew up in Queens, New York, and still spends most of his time in Paterson, New Jersey, but his wife and children moved to their family’s land in Turmus Ayya in 2021, according to The Guardian. They live on the border of the village near the settlers, and Odeh can scan the settler outpost below. The violence began before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza, but has grown worse in the past year, he said. “We’ve had multiple times where we were scared for our lives here, where we were actually in danger,” Odeh told The Guardian. He recounted the night settlers burned down part of his parents’ house, six Israeli military raids on his house, regular gunfire near the village, and an incident in which a rifle was pointed at his son, one of his six children.
When Odeh contacted the U.S. embassy about the attacks, he said, he was given canned replies to report them to local law enforcement. Asked what message he felt he had received from the U.S. government, Odeh said, “It’s OK for an Israeli American to live over here, but not for an American Palestinian.”
The violence has changed daily patterns in the village, residents said. Many fear bringing their children there, and discussions revolve around security measures — whether to install barbed wire or hang more American flags. Pointing to a neighbor from Chicago installing a barbed-wire fence, Odeh said, “I don’t want to live in a prison.” He added, “I’m born and raised in America. We lived in freedom over there. And I’m not gonna live any other way.”
Many of the residents voted for Trump but lost faith when the administration quickly moved to remove violent settlers from sanctions lists drawn up under the Biden administration, according to The Guardian. Alkam said, “We thought we would never get to this point. We never thought that American citizens in Turmus Ayya are going to be attacked under the eyes and the ears of the current administration.”
In late July, Alkam said, U.S. officials helped when the Israeli military occupied a house owned by a doctor from Syracuse who had hosted Democratic congressman Ro Khanna during his visit to Turmus Ayya earlier in the month. Alkam credited the embassy with “playing a big role” in getting the military to leave, according to The Guardian.