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CHICAGO: The relatives of an American Palestinian who moved with his five children and wife in 2020 to the West Bank are calling on the US to investigate the circumstances of his death.

Relatives in Chicago told Arab News that Khamis Ayyad, 40, had died of smoke inhalation on July 31 when he entered a home that was engulfed in flames to save people.

State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, who represents the southwest suburbs of Chicago in the Illinois legislature and is of Palestinian descent, met with Ayyad’s relatives.

He said the fires were started by Israeli settlers who have been rampaging through West Bank villages.

“This wasn’t random. It’s part of an ugly pattern of Israeli government-sponsored brutality from settler terrorism in the West Bank to the genocide unfolding in Gaza — enabled by US military funding and political support for Israel,” Rashid told Arab News.

“I’ve seen this violence firsthand. I was in Palestine in June 2023 when settlers invaded my family’s village in broad daylight. They killed a young man. There was no accountability, no justice.

“That lack of accountability has led to continued Israeli terrorism against Palestinians fighting for survival and liberation, including the murder of Palestinian American Khamis Ayyad.”

Rashid’s district represents a region of the southwest suburbs of Chicago called Little Palestine because of its large concentration of American Palestinians.

Relatives said the village of Silwad, where Ayyad lived, was hit with several arson fires in recent months by settlers, including homes, farmland and vehicles.

Ayyad is the second American Palestinian to be killed in July, and the fifth since the war on Gaza began in October 2023, ABC News reported.

On July 11, 2025, 20-year-old American Palestinian Sayfollah Musallet was murdered by a gang of Israeli settlers in the family’s farmlands located near Ramallah.

Israeli soldiers prevented Musallet’s family from reaching him while he was alive but wounded, relatives told Arab News.

Soldiers also prevented an ambulance from reaching him for more than two hours after the attack. He died as paramedics were placing him in the ambulance to take him to a nearby hospital.

Musallet is the cousin of Muhammad Ibrahim, who was arrested in the middle of the night by 20 soldiers wearing black masks in February and has been detained in the notorious Megiddo Prison without access to his parents or legal representation.

Ibrahim has not been charged with a crime, his family told Arab News, adding that he is suffering from an illness caused by the unsanitary conditions at the prison.

“Who will speak up for these Americans?” a relative of Ayyad asked.

JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Sunday and said he prayed there, challenging rules covering one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East.

Under a delicate decades-old “status quo” arrangement with Muslim authorities, the Al-Aqsa compound is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there.

Videos released by a small Jewish organization called the Temple Mount Administration showed Ben-Gvir leading a group walking in the compound. Other videos circulating online appeared to show Ben-Gvir praying. Reuters could not immediately verify the content of the other videos.

The visit to the compound known to Jews as Temple Mount, took place on Tisha B’av, the fast day mourning the destruction of two ancient Jewish temples, which stood at the site centuries ago.

The Waqf, the foundation that administers the complex, said Ben-Gvir was among another 1,250 who ascended the site and who it said prayed, shouted and danced.

Israel’s official position accepts the rules restricting non-Muslim prayer at the compound, Islam’s third holiest site and the most sacred site in Judaism.

Ben-Gvir has visited the site in the past calling for Jewish prayer to be allowed there and prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue statements saying that this was not the policy of Israel.

Ben-Gvir said in a statement he prayed for Israel’s victory over Palestinian militant group Hamas in the war in Gaza and for the return of Israeli hostages being held by militants there. He repeated his call for Israel to conquer the entire enclave.

The hillside compound, in Jerusalem’s Old City, is one of the most sensitive locations in the Middle East.

Suggestions that Israel would alter rules at the compound have sparked outrage in the Muslim world and ignited violence in the past. There were no immediate reports of violence on Sunday.

A spokesperson for Palestinians President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit, which he said “crossed all red lines.”

“The international community, specifically the US administration, is required to intervene immediately to put an end to the crimes of the settlers and the provocations of the extreme right-wing government in Al Aqsa Mosque, stop the war on the Gaza Strip and bring in humanitarian aid,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.