Photograph by Loai Ridi
I had already been following the siege of Qusra before Loai Ridi’s name entered the story. Two days ago I woke up to it again in my phone’s newsfeed — La Repubblica, one of several Italian outlets that have covered the village closely. Toledo, my hometown, was already on my mind. Lucas County — where Toledo is the largest city — after more than a year of pressure from the local Palestinian solidarity movement, had just recently decided not to renew its five-million-dollar Israeli bond, another victory for the BDS, Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.
I called a close Palestinian friend in Toledo, Afaf Adwan, originally from Gaza. Toledo is a close-knit community. Of course she knew Loai. She put me in contact with him. Afaf has lost many friends and family members during the genocide in Gaza. She is on the front lines of building solidarity at home.
On the morning of August 20th I spoke with Loai from the house he is still not allowed to leave.
Qusra is a village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. On or around August 9, colonizers from nearby outposts blocked the roads, tore stones from walls, cut the electricity and the water, and surrounded three homes belonging to the Abu Ridi and Hassan families. They wanted the people inside to flee so they could take the properties. Among those trapped were women and children — nieces, nephews, relatives. Loai’s brother Qusay and his nephew were in Loai’s house. His 83-year-old mother lives less than ten minutes away, in another house that is also under siege. Other family members are trapped in theirs. The entire area has been declared an off-limits military zone by the Israeli occupation forces.
Photograph by Loai Ridi
Loai Ridi has lived in Toledo for twenty-three years. He is a well-known community member. He built a business of gas stations and car washes across Northwest Ohio and Indiana. He was born and raised in Qusra. He has two daughters. He began building a house on ancestral land in 2023 so they would have a place in the village, a connection to their family story. For the last eight months construction has been halted. Workers were afraid to come. Water lines are repeatedly sabotaged. Electricity is often cut.
He watched the siege on security cameras from Toledo. After seven sleepless nights he flew from Detroit. “I can’t let the settlers steal my house while I was watching,” he said when he landed. He saw his mother for five minutes when he arrived. They have not been allowed to see each other since. No one is permitted in or out of his property.
The United Nations was allowed to deliver some food five or six days ago. Those supplies are running out. Despite public statements from U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, the embassy in Jerusalem tells Ridi only that it is “monitoring” the situation and trying to resolve it. There have been no other updates. Occupation forces are parked outside the gate. Settlers roam freely and are often seen fraternizing with the soldiers. Those soldiers are defending the colonizers, not the families under siege.
When Loai reached the house he climbed to the roof and raised an American flag. It did not stop a settler from walking onto his land the next morning. He told the soldiers the man should be arrested. They told him to go back inside.
Photograph by Loai Ridi
From Toledo, the Jewish Community of Toledo sent him a message of solidarity. They called the colonizers’ violence disgusting and abominable.
Huckabee, an evangelical Zionist who has long championed the colonizing of the West Bank, called the men surrounding the houses “Israeli terrorists.” He said their actions met the U.S. definition of terrorism: acts meant to put people in fear for their lives and force them to change their behavior. He distinguished them from “real settlers,” calling them “unsettlers.”
Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, rejects the language altogether:
“Palestine has already been settled for millennia, so these racist criminal interlopers cannot rightly be called ‘settlers.’ They are not ‘settlers,’ they are violent Zionist mobs and Israel regime paramilitaries. They do not live in ‘settlements,’ but in armed (and unlawful) colonial outposts. They are not engaged in ‘settler clashes,’ but in lynchings and pogroms. Calling them by their true name is important, and ending their impunity is the urgent duty of all of humanity.”
The distinction Huckabee draws is convenient. It lets an ambassador who supports the colonial project condemn its most visible thugs without questioning the project itself. The outposts are illegal even under Israeli law. The settlements they serve are illegal under international law. The army that stands by, arrives late, prays with the attackers, and then locks the village down is the same army that maintains the occupation and genocide. This is not a deviation. It is a method. It is how land is taken and how a people is made to understand that their presence is meant to be provisional.
The tactic used in Qusra — surround a home, cut it off, wait for the occupants to break — was used last month against a family in neighboring Jalud. Rights groups describe a coordinated strategy of displacement. The United Nations recorded more than 2,200 Palestinians displaced by settler violence and access restrictions in the first half of 2026 alone.
Loai Ridi’s return does not change the balance of power. It makes the theft harder to hide. A man from Toledo flies across the world to stand on his own roof because the alternative is to watch his family’s house disappear on a screen. His mother is under siege a few minutes away. His brother and nephew have already lived days without water or power. Women and children remain in the house. The food the UN brought is running out. The embassy is “monitoring”.
The siege of Qusra is one village in one week. It is also the logic of the occupation, made visible because a security camera, an American passport, and a hometown that refused to look away forced a few officials to notice. Huckabee’s words will not end it. Neither will a flag on a roof. What remains is that people like Loai Ridi keep returning — to a house, to a village, to land others have decided they should not inhabit. They keep returning because the alternative is disappearance while their continued existence becomes the essence of resistance
This is the story from Qusra. This is the story from Toledo. It is the story of our same common resistance.
