US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee doubled down Tuesday on his description of extremist West Bank settlers as “terrorists,” while denying reports of a clash between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the White House over the next phase of the US-backed plan for Gaza.

Huckabee used the term last week on X, to refer to the settlers besieging several homes in the West Bank village of Qusra. For over a week, the extremists have surrounded the houses in an apparent effort to drive their residents – including an American citizen – to flee. Though ostensibly dispersed by the army, the settlers have repeatedly returned to the site.

“I’ve been rebuked by people who said, ‘Well, that’s not terrorism,’” Huckabee said in an interview with Channel 12 news.

“But from the US definition of terror, when acts are conducted that cause people to change their behavior, and put them in fear for their lives, when things are done to people for the express purpose, whether they’re done to a nation, whether they’re done to a specific individual or to a family, but it causes them to be afraid to live their lives — that’s terror.”

Huckabee said the perpetrators come from “a very small minority” in Israel and claimed many of them live outside the West Bank, saying, “they’re not settlers, they’re unsettlers.”

“They’re there to stir up trouble and the damage that they are doing to Israel, the damage they are doing to the Jewish people – I have no idea why they think that they’re accomplishing anything other than hurting the very people they claim to be fighting for,” he said.

Referring to the Qusra siege, the ambassador said he believed Israeli authorities were already “acting” to address the incident regardless of the US embassy’s involvement. He noted, however, that “we don’t have a direct involvement if it doesn’t involve an American citizen.”

“But once it involves an American citizen, then our involvement is pretty much automatic and it’s going to be significant because that’s our job,” he said.

Asked by Channel 12 if he was disappointed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet condemned the incident, despite reports that the United States pressed the premier to do so publicly, Huckabee said, “What we’re........

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