US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by settlers armed with US-made rifles during a visit to the West Bank last week.
Khanna, who has served California’s 17th district since 2017, is among Congress’s most vocal critics of the Israeli government and has backed legislation that would penalize Israel over what he characterizes as genocide in Gaza. He was in the region last week, meeting with Palestinians. Khanna did not meet with Israeli officials.
Khanna told Reuters, speaking in the West Bank, that a day earlier, his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M-4 rifles, while touring Khirbet Zanuta – whose residents were forcibly displaced by settler raids following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“We were just looking at it, and these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M-4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said.
An aide to Khanna who was in the group, Cameron Kasky, said they were held for more than an hour and made appeals to the US Embassy in Jerusalem for help. A group of officers who appeared to be police eventually intervened, leading to their release, Kasky said.
I saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers, 21- and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us, the arrogance of those young IDF soldiers that my tax dollars are funding, having no respect for the fact that they were detaining Americans, no respect that there was an American congressperson in that bus, and laughing when our translator told them that there are Americans there and the American embassy is concerned,” Khanna told The New York Times.
The IDF said troops and police officers intervened after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media near Khirbet Zanuta.
“Upon receiving the report, IDF forces were dispatched to the scene. They dispersed the Israeli civilians within a short time, thereby reopening the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking the road.
IDF sources clarify Ro Khanna's incident
IDF sources doubted Khanna’s version of the events, saying no senior IDF officials were sent to the scene, as it was resolved quickly. The soldiers were not “on the side” of the settlers, the sources said.
The sources added that Khanna didn’t coordinate his visit with them beforehand and didn’t speak with the IDF after the incident.
The Israel Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the United States Embassy in Jerusalem. As of press time, no arrests had been made.
Ro Khanna visits West Bank
Khanna is the second Democrat considering a White House bid to visit the region last week. In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Rahm Emanuel, who was chief of staff to former president Barack Obama, said Israeli policies toward Palestinians were eroding support for the US-Israeli alliance.
Asked if he was running for president, Khanna said: “I’m strongly considering it and I’m more resolved to consider it after this trip.”
Overlooking a valley dotted with settler outposts on the outskirts of Turmus Aiya, a village home to thousands of Palestinian American dual nationals, Khanna said he believed his party’s establishment was “clueless about how much of a moral test Palestine, Gaza, and Israel have become.”
He said he chose exclusively to visit the West Bank, with programming led by Palestinians, to give him an unfiltered view of territory Israel won in the 1967 Middle East war.