California congressman Ro Khanna was detained for 90 minutes by armed Israeli settlers during a fact-finding visit to the occupied West Bank this week, an incident he says revealed the true nature of the occupation and the complicity of the Israeli military.
Khanna, 49, was visiting the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian village in the southern West Bank that settlers had destroyed. His van was surrounded by Israeli settlers carrying M4 rifles, American-made weapons.
“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,” Khanna told the BBC. “And these hoodlums come in with machine guns, an American-made M4 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.”
When Israeli troops arrived, they did not release Khanna’s group. They sided with the settlers. The group was freed only after police officers intervened. An aide had contacted the US Embassy in Jerusalem for help.
The Israeli military’s official account was terse. The IDF confirmed that troops and police responded to a report of settlers blocking vehicles, “dispersed the Israeli civilians, and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way.” It did not mention detaining a United States congressman.
The incident is not an anomaly. It is the daily reality of the West Bank, where about 700,000 Jewish settlers live among 3.3 million Palestinians in territory Israel has occupied since 1967. Settlements are illegal under international law. They continue to expand.
Khanna, who has been a vocal critic of Israeli policy and has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, said the experience confirmed what he already believed: that the Israeli occupation is a system of control in which settlers operate with impunity and the military enforces their authority.
He is now considering a presidential run in 2028. He said his party’s establishment is “clueless about how much of a moral test Palestine, Gaza and Israel have become.”
The question the incident poses for Washington is not new, but it is sharper now: when armed settlers with American-made rifles detain an American congressman, and the Israeli military sides with the settlers, what exactly is the United States supporting in the West Bank?