March 30, 2026
Mukhmas
Settler Violence
Ayman Mustafa is a U.S. citizen and landowner in the village of Mukhmas, located near Ramallah in the West Bank. He owns a 50-dunam plot planted with approximately 300 olive trees that produced around 150 tanakeh of oil annually. After settler activity began, the entire plot was entirely eliminated. For over two years, Mustafa has been unable to set foot on his own land. When he and his family attempted to access the property, settlers shot at his brother and physically prevented their entry. Unauthorized roads have since been constructed through the land itself, and trees have been destroyed. The property has effectively been placed under siege.
The harm Mustafa has suffered is not an isolated incident but part of a deliberate, coordinated campaign affecting the entire village of Mukhmas. Settlers operating from outposts linked to nearby settlements have established a sustained perimeter of violence and intimidation around the village, with the explicit goal of incrementally dispossessing landowners and eventually absorbing their land into existing settlements. This pattern of access denial, property destruction, agricultural interference, and escalating violence mirrors the documented conduct of settler outpost networks throughout the Binyamin region, a region directly supported by U.S.-based nonprofit organizations that fund paramilitary equipment, security infrastructure, and legal defense for the very individuals carrying out these attacks.
Israeli authorities have offered no protection or remedy. Police have refused to accept complaints from Mukhmas residents, and Israeli military and civil officials have provided cover for the settler activity rather than interference with it. For Mustafa and his family, there is no viable legal recourse within the Israeli system, making U.S. civil litigation the only meaningful avenue for accountability and compensation.
