The Current - American-Palestinian trapped in West Bank amid Israeli settler siege

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

We hear from Loui Ridi who travelled from Ohio to the village of Qusra in the West Bank to help his brother and nephew who have been trapped in their home, after Israeli settlers surrounded their house last week.  Then political analyst, Dahlia Scheindlin, on what this situation means in the larger context of surging Israeli settler violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank, and where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government stands on the issue.

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every Wednesday in your favorite podcast app, including YouTube. This is a CBC podcast. I'm Lindsay Duncombe, and this is the current podcast. For more than a week, Israeli settlers besieged Palestinian homes in the village of Kusra in the West Bank. Palestinians were left trapped inside, cut off from necessities. The situation is part of a bigger surge in Israeli settler violence and occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank. According to the UN, more than 1,4.4.4.5. 430 attacks on Palestinians by settlers took place this year, and 3,800 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.

The ongoing siege in Kusra pushed Lui Ridi, who lives in Ohio, to travel to his hometown in the West Bank earlier this week. His brother and nephew were one of the families trapped in a home he owns, which was surrounded by settlers. Lui joins me now. Good morning. Good morning. Where are you now? I am currently in my house, in Kusra, in the West Bank, and I am under siege with my brother and another family in the neighbor. Describe that for me.

It's all kind of mixed with emotions and frustrations and terrifying, dealing with the situation here. There's a lot of military. stationed around this house. There is like hundreds of them. On top of this, yet to prevent the settlers coming to my house,

first morning stepped out of my house to go check the backyard. As soon I stopped walking, I spotted a settler and stopped coming down toward me. And he really, he really, managed to make it to me to my face and he dared to tell me I need to leave that's his area and IDF were there did not do anything about it the IDF asked me if I can go home I said no that's my

property he said well it is a closed military zone I said it is my property it's my yard I'm staying in my yard and he was negotiating with the settler or probably begging him just to move to move away another incident. The same settler was able to come in front of my house, driving an ATV and in front of the IDF, and they came again to ask him to leave. So this house has been under siege. It was by the settlers now. It's adding the IDF as unable and they failed to remove the settlers from this area. Remind us what happened to your brother and nephew last week. Well, my brother and nephew and the neighbors been dealing with the settlers for months now. However, last week, things got escalated into a dangerous situation when the settlers

came and built a tent front of the house and created a block on the house. the house and the neighbor house become under siege. They could not leave the house. No one can come provide them any food, any water, any supplies whatsoever. Why did you travel to the West Bank from Ohio make the decision to go towards the violence? I was watching all these attacks by the settlers' life on my security cameras. I watched a lot of attacks live. And I was under a lot of stress, a lot of pressure dealing with this.

Until my brother was under siege, when I spoke to him, he said, they went to the extreme. They blocked me off, and I'm not sure what to do. I'm alone with my son. We don't have much food. And I asked him, how much do you have? He said, they only have a small bag. of bread and other food and I told my son we need to cut down on food because we're not sure how soon anyone can bring us food you know that's it was it was like emotional to me my own

brother in my own house he's trapped terrified for his life and I told him I will come I'll do whatever takes to provide you food and supplies to the house I will call the U.S. Embassy. I will call the U.S. members. I will do anything possible we can do. So I decided to come instead of living a nightmare watching this happening life on security cameras, it probably is easier for me just to live in it. You know, and that's here I am. I'm with him right now. How hard was it for you to get to the house? It was hard to begin with to leave my... wife, my two daughters. I have a 10 years old girl that she was terrified when I left and asking

me, are you really going to go sleep in this house? What's going to happen to you? Are the settlers going to attack you? Are you going to come back for us? I don't care that I left my business. I have a successful business in Ohio. But when it comes to family, you know, it was a lot of emotions leaving. And other than difficulties that we have to coordinate with the Israeli military, that someone can escort me to my own house. So we have to do a lot of calls, a lot of coordination. I have to wait until a military vehicle drive and someone to drive behind that military vehicle to escort me to my own house. What has those interactions with the Israeli military been like?

Well, the Israeli military is saying they're here to protect us. Honestly, what I'm seeing, that's not the case. First of all, they evacuated our neighbor's house and they took over. They forced our neighbor, wife and a husband and two girls. They are stationed in that house, and that family living with me right now. They have another family in my house living with me. How many people are in the house? Right now, me, my brother and my nephew,

another family that Yusuf and his wife, and I have two girls, two years old and four years old. And is it possible to come and go? Absolutely not. Actually, his mother and his brother and his brother and his sister, they live 20 meters, 20 meters behind us, and they are unable to go see them. They have not seen them in the last four days,

and they wave to each other from the windows and the fence. Today, I spoke, because a lot of news, a lot of media came in today, they were able to make it to the house, and the spokesperson of the IDF came in, and they asked personally, you know, sad those kids, they sit here for hours waving to their grandmother to see her. Can they go see her? So they escort them for 30 minutes. They said, okay, you have 30 minutes to go see them. And I said, now you can come back. And so, yeah, it is a sad situation that what's going on in this area here.

How concerned are you for your safety? I've been saying this. I am very, very concerned for my own safety. I'm concerned for my family safety. I'm concerned for even for the neighbor's safety. Because even though there's a lot of military around the house, Israeli settlers is still able to make it to my house and stand in front of me. And my faith is telling me, I need to leave. It's my area.

So I ask myself, and we have always internal thoughts. and discussion with my brother and other neighbors. What's going to happen to us if the military leave and the international media stop coming here, they're going to leave us with the settlers to attack us again. You worry about that. Absolutely. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has condemned the actions of the settlers. What more do you want from the U.S. government?

I mean, I've been saying this. I appreciate what he's saying, condemning the Israeli settlers. But that's not enough because we need an action on the ground to be removed and give us the freedom and the safety to go in and out from the house. As of now, that's not happening. Nothing happened on the ground. So what do you want the government to do? They have to do something to enforce what they're saying on the social media and on the news.

even the military condemned it as the Israel's officials condemned it, the settlers' leaders condemned it but no one able to enforce it on the ground so what I'm asking that someone needs to make some changes and enforce it on the ground

I still have behind my house two caravans or vans where the settlers are asleep when the settlers when I spotted him coming toward me he came out of that caravan they brought it in earlier probably three months ago.

Those has not been removed. They are illegal. The settlers themselves illegal. If they're saying they're here to remove the settlers, why they haven't removed those caravans for them? What do you want the international community to know about what's happening in the West Bank right now? Well, what's happening to everyone in the West Bank.

I'm not the only one. A couple months ago, I watched a fan. close by to our village. It's only 15 minutes a drive from here. It's called Jaloud, the Tupasi family. The settlers put a siege on that family. And they were succeeded, though. The family were forced to leave the houses.

There's two houses. And immediately, the settlers went in, and there raised the flag, the yellow flag on those houses. And I was next, and this is a pattern. And if they succeeded here, they're going to go to the next village, to the next house, and keep going. So the international and all the officials need to put an end to this so everybody can live in peace. What will you do now? How long do you plan to stay?

Well, I am living hour by hour, day by day. But I'm committed to stay here until I feel that my family is safe and my house is safe and protected. How confident are you that that could happen? I'm not too confident. I have hope, but the way things are going right now, I'm not too optimistic the way it's going. So I'm hoping that something different is going to happen to prevent those settlers coming back.

Hopefully we can check in with you again. Thank you so much for talking with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Lou I Reedy is a Palestinian American whose house was under siege in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, trapping his brother and his nephew inside. We reached him in the West Bank. Between tariffs, trade battles, and an ongoing war in the Middle East,

the lazy days of summer seem to have skipped Washington this year. So our podcast, two blocks from the White House, is here to keep you caught up even if you're in vacation mode. Join me, Katie Simpson with correspondence Paul Hunter and Willie Lowry and other journalists from our D.C. Bureau for a front row seat and what this all means for Canadians. Find and follow two blocks from the White House with new episodes every Wednesday in your favorite podcast app, including YouTube. Dalia Shindlin is a political analyst, columnist, and author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. She's been listening in from Tel Aviv. Dalia, good morning. Hi, and thank you for having me on the show. I'd like if you could put that interview in context for us.

Hearing Lui described the situation that they're in, how significant are these settler sieges in the context of the ongoing violence we've been seeing in the West Bank? Well, in one when they're very significant because they represent a policy that this government has undertaken and in many ways accelerated. I should say that the very broad policy by which Israel has been taking over, all of the West Bank, really, over decades of occupation and in various ways, making it more permanent, taking over many cases private land, building its own settlements, but also essentially finding ways to displace Palestinians. In the long term, that has been going on for decades.

The difference is that under this government, first of all, it's much more open and declared that the aim is annexation, full annexation. And at the very technical level, these towns and this village and his home is in what is designated under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, Area B. Now, this is very technical, but ultimately Israel was supposed to have still ongoing military and civilian control in area C, which is where most settlements are. That was formally agreed during the 1990s. Area B is under Israeli security control, but it is supposed to be under Palestinian authority control for everything to do with civilian affairs, including land use and property and everything that manages civilian life. One of the things that's really significant here is that the settlers have made

it a very open aim to go into area B. So beyond the areas that Israel is in some ways technically recognized as controlling for now. And then ultimately, of course, the settlers also want to go into area A, the areas where Palestinian authorities are supposed to be completely in control. Now, it's a bit of a fiction because those Oslo Accords have been so, has deteriorated so significantly. but the fact that they're trying to really take over houses one by one in Area B is just further evidence of how fast this government is trying to continue de facto annexation on the ground until certainly as much as they can before the elections in late October. You wrote an opinion piece earlier this week for the Israeli publication, Horatz, about trying to get to this area. What was that like? It's very difficult.

And it's difficult for a couple of reasons. One is that in the area of this cluster of Palestinian villages, almost every connecting road has been blocked. And that means these are oftentimes small roads that start off paved, but then Peter out into kind of dirt roads. And that almost everyone has been sort of blocked by a mound of earth or a chain or a gate. And UN agencies have tried to document this and count them. And there are about 900 such movement blockades all throughout the West Bank, which means that if you're living there day to day, you're basically trapped. You can't get out of your village. I mean, though I talked about not being able to leave the home, but even if you can leave your homes, it's very hard to move between these different villages. And we actually drove around in circles each time getting blocked somehow and it gets very confusing and extraordinarily frustrating. Once you actually reach the home, there is, as he pointed out, the blockade isn't only from the inside, from the outside. The soldiers are there to stop anyone who's coming to see the homes, although as we have seen documented in many videos when Israeli settlers show up and just hang around.

The soldiers are pretty comfortable with them and let them hang around. But when we got up there as two journalists, they basically chased us off. In that story, you shared the picture that you took of a billboard along the way. What did it say? There are many such billboards, but that the settlers are basically saying with the backing of government ministers, we are going to redeem the lands in areas A and B. And so they are very consciously stating this openly for anyone to think. which is important because for a long time Israel was maintaining a kind of outward posture

that it was just waiting for the conditions to be ripe, you know, for some sort of negotiation and future agreement. This government makes no such pretensions. They are open about wanting to take over all of that land. Now, theoretically, it's settlers who are saying those things, but they're billboards with government ministers saying we're going to give you all of these tax benefits and financial incentives to be there. and we should support what they are calling ranchers because a lot of these efforts take place in the form of not just individual settlements, but for example, agriculture, ranches or archaeological sites where settlers take over and say, oh, now this land can't be used by Palestinians because we have our, you know, ranch or archaeological sites.

So there are signs supporting all of those kinds of efforts. Only a small part of the West Bank, I should point out, the part where Israeli settlements already are in a way that the Oslo Accords allow, never allowed settlements, but allowed Israel to remain in control. That's area C, and that is 60% of the West Bank. So all of these areas we're talking about, B and A, together, are still only about 40% of the West Bank, which itself is just part of what was supposed to be a Palestinian state. But right now we're very far away from that, you know, with the situation in Gaza and the West Bank being treated very, very differently by the international community and no progress towards anything comprehensive. It is interesting to see how the Israeli government is characterizing the violence that's happening.

We have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the settler attacks are being done by a handful of troubled youth. What do you make of that characterization? Not much. It's frankly not true. Yes, true that many of the people conducting the actual violent acts, which are a form of terrorism, of course, are young. They can be in their teens or 20s or 30s. But the fact that they are just some sort of rogue group that doesn't represent policy is, you know, simply wrong. I mean, these are people, they wouldn't be able to do these things if the authorities really wanted to crack down on them. There is a lot of toleration by the army. Sometimes there are incidents of the army either tolerating standing by while they are committing these violent attacks, occasionally even participating.

And sometimes it's just too chaotic, but ultimately, you know, to know exactly who, whether it's the settlers or the army and how clashes got started. but for the most part, the army is there and allowing this to happen, and it's part of a broader policy. You know, there are, there is a debate about whether the army is losing control over these, you know, gangs of settlers who are out, really every day committing some form of attacks on Palestinians in that region, whether it's personal attacks, whether it's stealing their property, their livestock, doing damage to their infrastructure, sometimes something like a pogrom. I mean, Israelis have begun to call these pogrom, setting homes on fire. Remember, Israel has very robust institutions between the army and its intelligence, you know, its intelligence services. They are, they have very elaborate counterterrorism operations when it comes to Palestinians that have been in the past used when needed against Jewish terrorism.

There is every possibility of cracking down on them if the government wanted to. They do not want to. And so the idea that it's troubled at risk youth who are out of control, doesn't make any sense in the Israeli context. We also know it's many more people who are involved than the Prime Minister has said. He has said at points that there are 70 people. Then he said, well, maybe there are 150 such people. By most accounts, I can figure out there's, there are way more than that. And again, none of them could really operate without the backing of all the authorities. And, you know, there's also, I think, a general understanding that the ministers of the government

who are in charge of policy with relation to the settlements, particularly the Minister of who is also a minister in the Ministry of Defense. It gets a little complicated. He's not the Minister of Defense, but he has a secondary portfolio there, essentially being responsible for all of these activities. Everybody is aware that this is a radical fundamentalist pro-annexation of the minister himself, but Salas Maltrich. And so it's not just him, but there are numerous other ministers in the government who are giving their very explicit approval. Again, he's the one who's on billboard saying we're going to give you tax benefits for living out here, et cetera. So this is much more comprehensive than just a bunch of rogue youth.

How are Israelis reacting to this? Are they divided? They are divided about it. But I will say that, you know, there has been, because it serves, I think, the Israeli leadership to show the world and particularly the Trump administration that they're taking this seriously, there have been much more, many more expressions of condemnation of the kinds of activities that really count as Jewish terror. There have been even right-wingers saying, this is Jewish terror, we need to crack down, on this and as a result the israeli public has come to accept that there are unacceptable things going on there do i think it's the highest priority among the israeli public right now not particularly there

are surveys from the israel democracy institute showing that a plurality or even a majority of israelis think they should be dealt with more severely to rein in those kinds of activities but i wouldn't say it's the overwhelming top priority of most Israelis because it's simply overshadowed for the most part by everything else going on. Well, and some of that condemnation coming from the Trump administration in the form of the U.S. ambassador calling this terrorism. Before we let you go, I just want to look forward because there are national elections in October. What effect do you think that will have on the situation? Well, it's a very good question. Nobody really knows, because, of course, it depends on the outcome of the elections. I wouldn't say it's impossible for

Nizumahu to be the next prime minister again. But it does seem. less likely at this point. So if we're talking about a government led by, let's say, the current most prominent politician from the opposition parties, who is a former chief of staff, and let's say he manages to put together a coalition of parties that are representing what Israelis consider to be center-right, centrist parties, and maybe even some left-wing parties, I don't expect a fundamental change in the ultimate problem behind all this, which is the lack of political resolution, a horizon for a Palestinian state, self-determination, and end of the occupation. And I don't think an opposition government will do those things.

However, I do think that if there is a government led by the opposition figures I just mentioned, that I think they will make it a point to try to crack down on some of this violence, this settler terrorism against Palestinians, largely for the reasons you just pointed out. It's not good for Israel's position in the world. It's antagonizing the Trump administration. And I think it makes Israelis feel better about themselves to know that they're doing something about this while they don't have to worry about actually undermining settlement growth and the occupation itself or dealing with long-term negotiations. So in a way, it may be valuable if the next government cracks down. And I do think that they would have the political support to do that also from the public.

But I also think it will remain cosmetic and, in fact, a bit of a distraction from the much more significant issue. And of course, I don't want to belittle those kinds of crackdowns. Of course, every Palestinian family like Lai, who is interviewed, will live a better life without those individual attacks. But the fact is, in the long term, that kind of violence will always continue until Palestinians are able to govern themselves. Thank you so much for joining us, Dahlia. Thank you for having me. Dalia Shendlin is a political analyst, columnist, and author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. We reached her in Tel Aviv.

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