U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said Saturday that armed Israeli settlers briefly detained him and other Americans during a visit to the occupied West Bank, accusing the Israeli military of complicity.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) denied Khanna’s claim that they were involved in blocking his path Wednesday, in a statement to AFP.
“Israeli settlers, brandishing American-made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine,” Khanna said in a post on X.
When the Israeli military arrived at the scene, he added, “they sided with the settlers & continued our detention. They made a huge mistake.”
Footage and accounts provided to The New York Times by Khanna and his team show a group of armed men blocking the road outside a small village in the southern West Bank and swearing at them in Hebrew and Arabic.
Khanna told the Times that when the IDF arrived at the scene, the soldiers spoke to the settlers and subsequently blocked the road themselves when the settlers left.
“Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes,” Khanna told the Times.
After calls to the U.S. embassy and Israeli police, the congressman – who represents a district in Silicon Valley – said he was allowed to pass.
The Israeli military said in a statement sent to AFP that it had received a report “regarding Israeli civilians who were unlawfully blocking the vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media in the area of Khirbet Zanuta.”
“Upon receiving the report, IDF troops were dispatched to the scene, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking the road,” it claimed.
Since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the U.N. has reported a sharp increase in violence attributed to Israeli settlers in the West Bank, while several Israeli ministers have continued to call for the annexation of all or part of the territory.
The United States is a staunch ally of Israel, but some lawmakers, especially Democrats, have vehemently criticized Israel’s war on Gaza and, more generally, the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
