QUSRA — Palestinian American Louai Abu Ridi raised a giant American flag over his West Bank home, hoping it might deter extremist settlers besieging the property. But it wasn’t enough to stop one of them from walking onto Abu Ridi’s land on Tuesday, during a tense face-off.

Abu Ridi arrived in Qusra late on Monday after traveling from the US, fearing he could lose the property to Jewish settlers who have encircled three Palestinian homes in the village for more than a week, prompting US condemnation.

Abu Ridi, who grew up in the West Bank village, was taking a morning walk among his cherry and fig trees on Tuesday when a settler approached from the hill above, in an encounter filmed by Reuters.

“You came to make a mess, ha?” the settler said in Hebrew as he approached, holding what appeared to be a Jewish law code book in one hand and filming Abu Ridi with a mobile phone.

“You are a terrorist settler, you know that?” Abu Ridi said, also filming with his mobile.

An Israel Defense Forces vehicle drove by a few times before soldiers approached and spoke to the settler, telling him it was a closed military zone.

“I’ll leave if they leave. There are a lot of guys here. We’re all just guarding our territory. If they go inside the house, we’ll leave,” the settler told the soldiers.

The settler eventually retreated up the road before he was joined by two more settlers, and did not respond to a question from Reuters on what he was doing there. Eventually they ambled up the hill and out of sight.

“Just be inside, they go and you’ll be inside. Don’t talk to each other, okay? I’ll solve this problem,” an Israeli soldier told Abu Ridi, instructing him to enter his home.

Abu Ridi told the soldiers the settler should be arrested as his presence is illegal.

Related: From Ohio, a Palestinian American watches as settlers besiege his family in Qusra

The confrontation captured tensions in the village, where settlers began besieging the homes more than a week ago in an apparent effort........

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