Democrats demand U.S. investigation of American's death in West Bank

Washington Post

3 days ago

Nearly 30 Senate Democrats are urging the Trump administration to investigate the recent death of an American citizen in the West Bank.
In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, the senators criticized what they labeled a 'culture of impunity when it comes to incidents where civilians have been killed in the West Bank, including Americans.'
Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, 20, of Tampa, was killed July 11 while visiting family in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian health authorities and Musallet's family have said Israeli settlers are responsible for his death.
Shortly after Musallet was killed, the Israel Defense Forces said it was examining reports of a death during a confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians in the area.
Spokespeople for the Israeli embassy in Washington and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The State Department declined to comment.
The senators' letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, was signed by 29 lawmakers, accounting for more than half of the chamber's Democrats. No Republicans have joined the effort.
Three other Palestinian Americans have died in the West Bank since the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023. Democratic members of Congress have objected to the wave of settler violence, arguing that American citizens are falling victim.
The U.S. government 'has failed in its responsibility to protect American citizens overseas and demand justice for their deaths,' the letter states.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), the letter's lead author, has called for similar investigations in the past. He has emerged as a vocal critic of settler violence and the Israeli government's response to it. His office shared responses to similar requests made of the Biden administration, which show officials offered little further information about the deaths but committed to speaking with Israel's government about them.
At a Senate hearing earlier this month to evaluate President Donald Trump's nomination of Michael Waltz, the former White House national security adviser, to become ambassador to the United Nations, Van Hollen criticized the Trump administration's decision to revoke sanctions imposed by the Biden administration targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank whom the U.S. government at the time deemed extremists.
'When you withdrew that executive order, you sent a very bad signal,' Van Hollen said then.
An April analysis by the Washington Institute, a think tank, found that Israeli settler violence has surged in the last year, rising 30 percent in the first part of the year, compared with the same period the year before. Meanwhile, Palestinian terrorism in the same area has sharply declined, the analysis found.
'The increase in settler violence at a time when Palestinian terrorism is decreasing lends credence to the assessment that settler attacks are not simply a response to terrorism, as some have claimed,' the study's author, Neomi Neumann, wrote.
The Trump administration has taken a complicated approach to Israel since entering office in January. At times, it has shown frustration with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu for the inability to reach a peace deal in Gaza, which has been afflicted by violence and famine nearly two years into the war.
Notwithstanding, top Israeli officials have visited Washington multiple times in the last six months, and Trump authorized the U.S. military to join Israeli forces in an attack on Iran's nuclear program in mid-June, fulfilling one of Netanyahu's core priorities.
Heidi Levine, Miriam Berger and Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed to this report.