ALBAWABA - U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said he and his delegation were detained for over an hour by armed Israeli settlers during a recent visit to the occupied West Bank, calling the experience a “jarring reflection” of the realities faced by Palestinians under Israeli rule.
The confrontation came when his delegation was touring communities in the southern West Bank that have been routinely attacked by Israeli violence, Khanna told Reuters in an interview in the Palestinian community of Turmus Ayya. The California Democrat said residents with U.S.-made M4 guns surrounded their vehicle and stopped the group from leaving the area.
The delegation had been documenting damage in a Palestinian town where homes and a school had purportedly been destroyed before armed Israelis arrived and surrounded them, Khanna said. "The settlers phoned the Israeli army," he said. "The security forces were at first with the settlers, not with the American delegation.
Cameron Kasky, one of Khanna’s staffers, said the party was detained at gunpoint and asked for help from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and was able to leave only after Israeli police officials intervened and cleared the road.
Israeli military said its personnel were responding to reports of Israeli civilians blocking vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian community whose people were uprooted following settler violence after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The military claimed troops dispersed those engaged and allowed the trucks to continue on their way.
The incident comes as Khanna looks to a potential candidacy for the 2028 U.S. presidential election and against the backdrop of a rising dispute within the Democratic Party about Washington’s backing of Israel. During his tour, Khanna said he talked only with Palestinian communities in an effort to acquire what he called an unfiltered understanding of circumstances in the occupied West Bank.
He also said the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories has become a defining moral problem for U.S. policymakers and criticized Israeli tactics in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has repeatedly denied charges of genocide and apartheid, saying its military operations and security measures are justified by the need for national defense and challenging foreign criticism of its settlement strategy.
