TEHRAN – Israeli police admitted that four settlers were arrested after an attack on CNN and other journalists in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.
The journalists were near the village of Sinjil north of Ramallah to cover the one-year anniversary of the killing of Saif Musallet, a Palestinian-American who was beaten to death by settlers last July, CNN reported.
Within minutes of arriving at the location where Musallet was killed, Israeli settlers descended on the area. As the CNN team and other journalists tried to leave, a group of four settlers blocked the road with their car and tried to keep the vehicles from moving forward.
The four settlers were wielding wooden and metal rods and stones. One settler brandished a knife and tried to puncture the tires of CNN’s vehicle.
The settlers then began to jump on the vehicle behind CNN’s — carrying another group of journalists — and smashed the windshield of that vehicle. Another group of settlers tried to block a separate exit route before chasing the journalists towards the town of Sinjil.
After the killing of Musallet in July 2025, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it a “criminal and terrorist act,” urging authorities to investigate. But Musallet’s father told CNN no one has been arrested since the killing.
This attack on journalists comes just days after U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna was detained by settlers near the village of Turmus Ayya in the West Bank. The village has a population of thousands of Palestinian-Americans who have come under repeated attack by settlers in the area.
Khanna visited the village to show solidarity with American citizens who have told CNN they feel forgotten by their government.
“I saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers, 21- and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us, the arrogance of those young IDF soldiers that my tax dollars are funding, having no respect for the fact that they were detaining Americans, no respect that there was an American congressperson in that bus, and laughing when our translator told them that there are Americans there and the American embassy is concerned,” Khanna told Reuters.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is himself wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, said the issue of settler violence has “blown up beyond belief.” However, his remarks are misleading.
Netanyahu described the perpetrators as a group of 150 “juvenile delinquents.” He also claimed that the police and military “take actions,” while asserting that Israel’s courts “are very lenient” toward those convicted of settler violence.
The occupied West Bank has witnessed a sharp surge in settler violence, with numerous incidents in which Israeli soldiers have stood by without intervening, as the Israeli government has simultaneously accelerated the expansion of settlements across the territory.
The central question is what policies and actions have emboldened settlers.
The continued expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank, coupled with the displacement of Palestinians as part of the “Greater Israel” project, has further emboldened extremist settlers. Yet Netanyahu refuses to acknowledge that these acts are a direct consequence of policies pursued by successive Israeli governments, including his own.
Netanyahu is unwilling to confront settler violence against Palestinians. When the objective is to drive Palestinian from their own lands, such attacks can be seen as serving broader territorial ambitions associated with the “Greater Israel” project.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have played prominent roles within Netanyahu’s coalition in advancing policies that encourage settlement expansion and further inflame tensions.
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is regarded as illegal under international law, and the UN Security Council has adopted resolutions obliging Israel to withdraw from the territories it captured in 1967, including the West Bank. However, Israel has not withdrawn from these territories and has continued expanding settlements there.
As settlers observed the Netanyahu government conducting military operations in Gaza for more than 1,000 days, many appeared increasingly emboldened to intensify attacks against Palestinians, including assaults with metal rods, while establishing their own colonies. It is therefore not surprising that settler violence has increased significantly since October 7, 2023.
Even U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who had described the killing of Saif Musallet as a “criminal and terrorist act,” is inherently happy with the crackdown on the native Palestinians. Huckabee, whom Tucker Carlson has described as a Christian Zionist, has openly argued that Israel has a biblical right to control territory extending well beyond its internationally recognized 1948 borders. As a close ally of President Donald Trump, he has aligned himself with Israeli extremists who seek to advance the “Greater Israel” project.
Public condemnation of settler violence carries little weight if those responsible are not held accountable. The absence of meaningful enforcement, particularly under the influence of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, has contributed to a climate in which violent settlers act with a sense of impunity.
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