A high-profile Democratic U.S. lawmaker has brought new international attention to escalating tensions in the occupied West Bank after revealing he was held for an hour and a half by armed Israeli settlers during an official visit last week. Ro Khanna, a 49-year-old California congressman who is openly considering a 2028 bid for the U.S. presidency, told reporters the incident unfolded Wednesday as he and his travel team traveled through the territory to assess the human impact of Israeli occupation.
Khanna and his staff were riding in a private van en route to the destroyed Palestinian community of Khirbet Zanuta when a group of settlers carrying semi-automatic M4 rifles surrounded the vehicle and blocked their path, cutting off any route forward. In a public post shared to the social platform X shortly after the incident, Khanna said that even after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrived at the scene, military personnel aligned with the settlers and continued the unplanned detention of his delegation.
“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed – they had ruined the school, they had wiped out the entire community, and we were simply documenting what we saw,” Khanna explained to reporters in an interview. “These extremists came in with machine guns, American-made M4s, blocked the road, and detained us. When they called the IDF, the IDF took their side, not the side of a visiting American congressional delegation.”
A spokesperson for the IDF pushed back against Khanna’s account in an official statement issued after the incident. The military said troops and local police were dispatched to the area after receiving an initial report that settlers had blocked civilian vehicle traffic. “Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” the statement read. The BBC also confirmed it had requested additional comment from the IDF, with no further response provided as of press time.
One of Khanna’s aides, who was present during the detention, confirmed that the delegation reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to request assistance while they were blocked. The group was ultimately released after a contingent of Israeli police intervened to end the standoff.
The incident comes amid long-running global controversy over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, territory Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Since 1967, Israel has constructed more than 160 formal settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are home to roughly 700,000 Israeli Jewish citizens. These settlements are universally recognized as illegal under international law, a position the Israeli government has rejected repeatedly. Today, an estimated 3.3 million Palestinian residents live in the occupied West Bank alongside the settlements, with growing frequency of violent clashes between settlers and local Palestinian communities that the IDF has failed to curb in many cases.