A California congressman held by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a West Bank visit says the detention gave him a stark window into the daily reality Palestinians face under occupation.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat, described the incident to Reuters on Thursday while still in the Palestinian territories. His delegation had traveled to a village in the southern West Bank where Israeli settlers have staged repeated attacks. When the group arrived to inspect a school and settlement that settlers had destroyed, armed men carrying M4 rifles surrounded their van and blocked the road.
"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 said. "And these hoodlums 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."
The detention lasted roughly 90 minutes before Khanna's team contacted the US embassy and Israeli police, which allowed them to proceed. The Israeli military said it responded after receiving a report that settlers were obstructing vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet whose residents were forced to evacuate following violent settler raids that intensified after October 2023.
What struck Khanna most was the attitude of the young men holding guns. "I saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers, 21- and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us," he told Reuters. "The arrogance of those young IDF soldiers that my tax dollars are funding, having no respect for the fact that they were detaining Americans, no respect that there was an American congressperson in that bus, and laughing when our translator told them that there are Americans there and the American embassy is concerned."
He framed the encounter as a direct lesson in power without consequence. "The arrogance of power, of a power that has had no accountability, total impunity, and it's created a toxic culture of oppression," Khanna said.
The detention also forced a personal reckoning. "I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life," Khanna told the New York Times, which first reported the incident. "Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes."
Khanna is among Congress's most vocal critics of Israel's war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank. In May, he released a video blaming the Democratic Party's 2024 election loss partly on the party's "blank check to Israel and Netanyahu while they committed genocide in Gaza." When asked Thursday whether he plans to run for president, he said he was strongly considering it and felt more resolved to do so after the West Bank trip.
The broader context underscores the tensions Khanna witnessed. Over 700,000 Israeli settlers now live across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, with the United Nations calling these settlements illegal. Since October 2023, nearly 300,000 Palestinians have lost employment in the West Bank due to intensified restrictions. A June UN inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities deliberately targeted Palestinian children in what it characterized as genocide and war crimes. According to human rights group Yesh Din, no Israeli has faced indictment for killing a Palestinian since October 2023.
Author James Rodriguez: "A congressman getting detained and released in 90 minutes is a photo op moment, but Khanna's framing it as a visceral lesson in occupation dynamics is worth taking seriously."
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