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Jeffries tells Trump to make Israel protect Palestinians from settlers
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The most senior Democrat in the House of Representatives put the Qusra siege on Washington's table on Monday, and named the party he wants held to it.
"The ongoing siege of Palestinian homes in the West Bank by violent, lawbreaking settlers is unacceptable. Enough," Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X. "The Trump administration must compel the Israeli government to protect the lives, property and livelihood of innocent Palestinian civilians."
The Hill and Middle East Eye both carried the statement. It is the first time the House minority leader has demanded that the administration apply pressure on this file, rather than describing settler violence in general terms.
What Jeffries is answering#
Settlers have surrounded three houses at Ras al-Ein, on the edge of Qusra, since 9 August. About fifteen people from the Abu Rida and Hassan families live in them, among them two children under seven and the family of a dual American citizen.
The army declared a closed military zone, ordered two of the houses emptied and put everyone into the third, then reversed a wider evacuation order for roughly fifteen homes within hours of its becoming public. The settlers stayed.
That American citizenship is what pulled Washington in. Mike Huckabee, the ambassador in Jerusalem and a long-standing supporter of the settlements, called the men besieging the homes Israeli terrorists and the siege a horrific act of terror.
The gap between an ambassador and a policy#
Huckabee's words were an ambassador's condemnation. Jeffries's demand is a policy instruction, and it is addressed to an administration that lifted the sanctions on violent settlers imposed by its predecessor in January 2025.
Neither the White House nor the State Department has said what, if anything, it will ask of Israel over Qusra.
For Palestinian readers the arithmetic behind the sentence matters more than the sentence. Eighteen Palestinians have been killed and 880 wounded in settler attacks recorded so far in 2026.
The families at Ras al-Ein have now spent ten days inside one house. Whether an American statement moves a single settler off their land is the only test that reaches them.
