Calling it a “criminal and terrorist act,” the U.S. ambassador to Israel has demanded the country “aggressively investigate the murder” of an American who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s comments are the strongest issued by the State Department since the death of Sayfollah Musallet, known as Saif, and the first time it has directly called on Israel to investigate the incident.
“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Huckabee said on X.
Musallet had traveled from his home in Tampa, Florida, to visit his mom, brother and sister.

Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who was governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, maintained an arch-conservative position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he ran for president in 2016. He has long been a staunch advocate for settlers’ rights to colonize Palestinian land.
Nizar Milbes, a close family friend of the Musallets, welcomed Huckabee’s statement, saying in a telephone interview Wednesday that it “sounded good,” although he questioned whether the demand was “just talk or is there going to be action behind it?”
Milbes, who is visiting the West Bank from California, added that the family wanted U.S. authorities to be involved in the investigation.
Musallet’s friends and family paid their final respects to him at a funeral Sunday, video published by The Associated Press showed. Among the mourners was his father, who raced from Florida to be there.
“We demand justice against these settler terrorists,” Musallet’s father, identified as Kamil Musallet, told the AP. He called on the U.S. government to “do something about it.”
A second man identified, as Mohammed al-Shalabi, 23, was also killed in the incident Friday, according to the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry.
It was not immediately clear how the events leading up to their deaths unfolded.