Palestinian-American owner of besieged Qusra home confronts settler, tells soldiers to arrest him

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 today, sparking a tense face-off.

Abu Ridi arrived in Qusra late yesterday after traveling from the US, fearing he could lose the property to extremist Israeli 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 village in the West Bank, is taking a morning walk among his cherry and fig trees today when a settler approaches from the hill above, in an encounter filmed by Reuters, the only media outlet present.

“You came to make a mess, ha?” the settler says in Hebrew as he approached, holding what appeared to be a Torah in one hand and filming Abu Ridi with a cellphone.

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

An Israeli military vehicle drives by a few times before soldiers approach and speak to the settler, telling him it’s a closed military area.

“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 tells the soldiers.

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

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

Ridi tells the soldiers the settler’s presence was illegal and he should be arrested.

The confrontation captures tensions in the village where extremist settlers began besieging the homes more than a week ago, part of what rights groups say is a wider effort by settlers to seize more land from Palestinians, further eating into territory where they aim to establish a state.

I was with Palestinian-American Loui Ridi tonight when he made it to his home in Qusra.
One of the first things he did was raise an American flag over his house.
I’ll have much more on this story soon- pic.twitter.com/xAZpeJrZlH

— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 17, 2026