Vulnerable People Project Sounds the Alarm as Thousands of American Citizens in Sinjil and Turmus Ayya Are Fenced In, Besieged, and Forced from Their Homes — and Warns That Washington Is Watching Its Own People Be Displaced
NEWS PROVIDED BY
The Vulnerable People Project
July 28, 2026
SINJIL and TURMUS AYYA, WEST BANK, July 28, 2026 /Standard Newswire/ — Thousands of American citizens are living under siege in two Palestinian villages northeast of Ramallah, where days of Israeli fences, locked gates, and military checkpoints have now been compounded by the seizure of two civilian homes in Turmus Ayya — one of them belonging to a Palestinian-American doctor, over which soldiers raised the Israeli flag. Sinjil and Turmus Ayya are home to thousands of U.S. passport holders, and one of the villages, Sinjil, has been physically fenced in until its own residents call it a prison. The Vulnerable People Project (VPP) is receiving on-the-ground reporting as the crisis deepens and is calling on the United States government to act for its own citizens living behind the fence.
Since shortly after October 2023, Israeli authorities have built a metal fence around Sinjil — roughly five meters high and running more than two kilometers — with heavy steel gates sealing every road into town except one, which sits under a permanent military checkpoint. Mohammad Alwan, who coordinates the local committee resisting the settlements, says the barrier has cut residents off from roughly 8,000 of the village’s 14,000 dunams of land. The town is now boxed in by five settlements, two outposts, and an army base, closing it off from every direction. Musa Shabana, a father of seven who runs a plant nursery on the edge of town, put it plainly to Reuters: Sinjil, he said, is a big prison now.
Israel’s official position is that the fence protects civilians and prevents stone-throwing on the main road, and that keeping one gate open still amounts to free access. Sinjil’s mayor, Muatasem Tawafsha, sees it very differently, describing it not as a fence around land but as a wall cutting the community off from its own history and from land where residents know every stone.
The seizure of homes has become routine — and in this case, the home belongs to an American. In the latest incident, Israeli forces seized two civilian homes in Turmus Ayya, forcing both families out and converting the properties into military outposts. One belongs to Dr. Hassan Zaater, a U.S. citizen and Palestinian-American physician who, according to local accounts, had returned from the United States only days earlier to visit his hometown with his family. Soldiers ordered the American family out citing unspecified “security reasons,” occupied the property for roughly 24 hours, and raised an Israeli flag over the residence — footage of which spread quickly on Palestinian social media. Israeli forces also forced a second Palestinian family in Turmus Ayya from their home before using it as a military position, withdrawing from both only after nearly a full day and allowing the families back once the operation had ended. It fits a pattern repeating across the West Bank, in which families are pushed out of their homes on short notice and the buildings are converted into military lookout posts and staging areas.
Both villages have absorbed attack after attack this summer. Armed settlers have struck Turmus Ayya and Sinjil from multiple directions, surrounded one resident’s home and tried to force their way inside, and driven livestock through Palestinian olive groves in deliberate provocation. Between Sinjil and Abwein, settlers moved in new mobile homes to expand an existing outpost, protected throughout by Israeli forces. The area saw one of its worst days on July 11, 2025, when settlers beat to death 20-year-old Palestinian-American Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet — who had arrived from Florida weeks earlier to visit family — and shot dead 23-year-old Mohammad Al-Shalabi, with soldiers reportedly blocking paramedics from reaching Musallet for some three hours. This month, on the first anniversary of that killing, settlers attacked journalists covering the memorial near Sinjil, smashing a windshield and threatening crews, and Israeli police arrested four of the assailants.
The American dimension is impossible to ignore. Turmus Ayya, home to thousands of Palestinian-Americans, normally fills each summer with families flying in from the United States; this year many are staying away. On July 9, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna was detained by armed settlers during a West Bank visit that also took him to Turmus Ayya to stand with American citizens who say their own government has forgotten them; he has since called for the settlers’ arrest and prosecution. A year earlier, it was near Sinjil that Saif Musallet — one of several U.S. citizens killed in the West Bank since the Gaza war began — lost his life.
Beyond the fence and the attacks, the siege operates on two fronts, military and economic. Sinjil has endured days of total closure at every entrance, with residents reduced to hand-carrying basic supplies through the one locked iron gate; leaving the village now requires switching from one vehicle to another, since people can no longer simply drive their own cars to work. In Turmus Ayya, the main gate has been shut since morning, as on most days lately — choking off both movement and the town’s commercial life.
“Israeli soldiers just forced an American family out of their home and raised a foreign flag over it — on land where U.S. citizens have lived for generations,” said Jason Jones, founder of the Vulnerable People Project. “These are not distant strangers in someone else’s war. They are U.S. citizens, losing their land, burying their sons, and being forced from their own homes — and their government’s silence is deafening. A fence around a village of Americans, and a flag over an American family’s house, is a test of whether American citizenship still means anything when the person holding the passport is Palestinian. Washington cannot keep looking away.”
The forcible transfer of civilians and the appropriation of private property not justified by military necessity are prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians and their homes under occupation. The Vulnerable People Project urgently calls on the United States government, the State Department, Congress, the United Nations, and the international community to demand an immediate end to the siege of Sinjil and Turmus Ayya, the removal of the fence and gates strangling the villages, the return of homes seized and converted into military posts, and genuine accountability for the settlers and forces who have killed, attacked, and displaced civilians — including American citizens — with impunity. When Americans are living behind a fence, hand-carrying food through a locked gate, and watching a flag raised over their homes, this is no longer a conflict Washington can watch from afar.
VPP field monitoring is tracking the situation in real time and will provide further updates as information becomes available.
For more information about the Vulnerable People Project and its mission to Save West Bank Christians, please visit SaveWestBankChristians.com.
PRESS CONTACT: Lex Pouliot, lex@thegreatcampaign.org or 970-342-4418
ABOUT JASON JONES & THE VULNERABLE PEOPLE PROJECT:
Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, and human rights worker. He is president of Movie to Movement, the Human Rights Education Organization (H.E.R.O.) and founder of the Vulnerable People Project. The Vulnerable People Project advocates for persecuted communities around the world, with a focus on exposing human rights abuses and supporting vulnerable individuals regardless of faith or background.
SOURCE Vulnerable People Project