From a story in NorthJersey.Com, a local New Jersey paper (subscription required to read the whole article, and see the photo of burning village):

Afif Alasmar traveled to his vacation home in the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya, a popular destination for Palestinian Americans, as he does every summer. He was eager to relax, visit family, check on his land and attend three nephews’ weddings.

“The town grew in the last 10 to 15 years with new, beautiful homes and beautiful farms,” said Alasmar, a Clifton business owner. “It’s known for its olive oil and has about 10,000 acres of farmland. Even though they live in the United States, people are very attached to the town.”

Lately, though, Alasmar and other families have become uneasy about their summer haven amid a spike in West Bank violence, including a June 21 rampage by hundreds of settlers who set fire to dozens of homes and cars in Turmus Ayya. One person, 27-year-old Omar Qattin, was shot and killed in the attack while trying to help his injured cousin (Hannan Adely, “NJ residents say US turned its back on them when they were attacked on vacation,” NorthJersey.com, July 6, 2023).

It’s an interesting but largely unasked question whether Americans are attacking one another in the armed clashes taking place in the West Bank, but it’s entirely possible, and well worth considering. If Jewish Americans can live in West Bank settlements and join the Israeli military/border police (they can and do), and Palestinian Americans can visit and live in settlement-adjacent towns and villages throughout the West Bank (they can and do), nothing stops “us” from killing “one another” over there. There’s no E Pluribus Unum under military occupation. Sad but true.I’ve met my share of armed American settlers in Gush Etzion, and have been detained by my share of American-Israeli soldiers, most recently this past March when I visited Hebron. They try their best to be friendly—“Oh, where in Jersey are you from?”—but I don’t consider them friends. Underneath the friendly facade, they know that if the order were to come, they’d be duty-bound to put a bullet through my head, or that of my actual friends. They know that; I know that. It’s our “fellow Americans” who don’t know it. But now they do.