Rep. Ro Khanna Says Armed Israeli Settlers Detained Him for Over an Hour in the West Bank

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, says he was surrounded and held for more than an hour by armed Israeli settlers during a visit to the occupied West Bank, an encounter he described as a firsthand look at the human toll of Israel's occupation. Khanna said the settlers who blockaded his group were carrying U.S.-made M4 rifles, and that Israeli soldiers who arrived at the scene took the settlers' side rather than protecting the visiting Americans.

The confrontation unfolded in Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian community in the southern West Bank where residents have faced repeated settler attacks. Khanna said his delegation's van was encircled by settlers who prevented the group from leaving. An aide who was traveling with the congressman said the group appealed to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help while they were held, and that officers who appeared to be police eventually intervened and dispersed the crowd, allowing the delegation to leave. A New York Times photojournalist was present and witnessed part of the standoff.

"The IDF took the side of the settlers, not the side of the Americans," Khanna said, calling for an investigation into the incident. The lawmaker, who has said he is weighing a 2028 presidential run, framed the trip as an effort to see conditions in the West Bank without a filter, and he has become one of the more outspoken Democratic critics of the level of U.S. military support flowing to Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces offered a different account. In a statement, the military said it had received a report of Israeli civilians blocking foreign nationals and members of the media in Khirbet Zanuta. Upon receiving the report, the IDF said, troops were dispatched to the scene, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians and reopened the blocked road. The military said its soldiers "did not take part in blocking the road" and denied that any of the visitors had been detained.

The episode landed amid a broader surge in settler violence across the West Bank that has drawn warnings even from within Israel's own government. In a separate incident around the same time, settlers attacked a group of journalists, including CNN's Jeremy Diamond, with clubs and knives; authorities said several people were arrested in connection with that assault. Khanna's account, delivered in interviews after he returned to the United States, added a rare on-the-ground perspective from a sitting member of Congress and intensified a debate among Democrats over how Washington should respond to attacks on Palestinian communities carried out by Israeli citizens.