US diplomats visit West Bank after Israeli settler attacks
US diplomats visited a Christian Palestinian town in the West Bank on Sunday following attacks by extremist Israeli settlers on European diplomats and an American photojournalist in the previous two days.
Riley Barnes, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, Brian Burch, US ambassador to the Holy See, and several other diplomats visited the Latin Convent church and were expected to meet with members of the Christian community in Taybeh.
Belgian, French and Polish diplomats, along with a French mayor and Palestinian civilians, had been attacked near Taybeh on Saturday by masked Israeli settlers.
The previous day, Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was taken to hospital after being assaulted while covering a Palestinian olive harvest near another West Bank village.
The diplomats’ visit coincided with US President Donald Trump endorsing his ally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for Israel’s parliamentary election on October 27.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee attended a settler conference in the West Bank on Sunday.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian and longtime supporter of Israel, earlier wrote on X calling for “those who attacked” the Washington Post photojournalist, a US citizen, to be jailed.
Trump has this year expressed his opposition to settlement expansion, but his administration has put little pressure on Netanyahu’s right-wing, pro-settler government to change its policy.
While Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and the IDF both blamed “Israeli rioters” for the attack on the diplomats, Netanyahu, whose coalition is projected to lose its governing majority, has been more circumspect.
He has said the diplomats entered a “sensitive area with a history of confrontations without prior coordination with the IDF,” and that the facts of the attack on Levine are “unclear.”
France urged Israeli authorities to arrest Saturday’s attackers and to end criminal violence in the West Bank, but by Sunday there was no announcement from Israeli authorities of any arrests in either of the two latest incidents.
