US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a visit this week to the occupied West Bank.
Speaking with Reuters from a Palestinian village, Khanna said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles on Wednesday while touring a part of the southern West Bank where residents face frequent Israeli settler attacks.
“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” said Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California in the US House of Representatives.
“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, 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, referring to the Israeli military.
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.
The Israeli military said troops and police officers intervened after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta, a small Palestinian hamlet whose residents were forcibly displaced by violent settler raids following the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
“Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” the military said.
Israel’s police did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
Reporting by Reuters
