The United States government requested on Tuesday that Israeli authorities thoroughly investigate the death of Saif Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American who died last week at the hands of settlers in an attack in Cisjordania.
The United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said that “I have asked Israel to thoroughly investigate the murder of Saif Mussallet, an American citizen who was visiting his family in Sinjil when he was beaten to death.”
Sinjil is a town located north of Ramallah.
“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was only 20 years old,” the American diplomat criticized through a brief statement posted on his profile on the social media platform X.
The violence of Israeli settlers in Palestine is escalating
The incident is one of several that have occurred in the last few hours at the hands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, who during Monday night set fire to a vehicle in the town of Burqa, east of Ramallah, and in the early hours of Tuesday attacked a Palestinian in Jirbet Um Nir, south of Hebron.
The operations of the Israeli Army and the attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have left more than 930 Palestinians dead since this type of actions increased since October 7, 2023, although record numbers of deaths had already been recorded in these territories in the first nine months of that year.
According to United Nations data, around 500 Palestinians died in the West Bank in 2024, while more than 120 deaths have been reported so far this year in the context of the occupation and the conflict.
What is the difference between the West Bank and Gaza?
Both the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinian territories captured by Israel, as well as East Jerusalem, in the Six-Day War of 1967.
But there are important geographical differences: while Gaza is an enclave to the south of Israel on the border with Egypt, the West Bank is a much larger territory, located between Israel and Jordan, with cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin, and Hebron.
Politically, Gaza is controlled by Hamas, while in the West Bank, the predominant secular group Fatah has been negotiating with Israel for decades and thanks to the Oslo Accords of 1993, it managed to create the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which has limited control over some sectors of the West Bank territory.
Israel has built dozens of settlements throughout the West Bank, which are home to over 500,000 residents, despite international criticism deeming them illegal.