US Democrat Ro Khanna says he was detained by armed Israeli settlers in occupied West Bank

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Ro Khanna said settlers were armed with US-made weapons and Israel Defense Forces refused to intervene

4 min readJul 12, 2026 05:16 AM IST

First published on: Jul 12, 2026 at 04:59 AM IST

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., speaks at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemoration at the South Carolina Statehouse. (Photo: AP)

Democratic congressman Ro Khanna says he was stopped and held for about 90 minutes by armed Israeli settlers while touring the occupied West Bank.

Khanna’s van was surrounded by settlers near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet in the southern West Bank, on Wednesday, July 8. Residents left the hamlet after settler raids that followed the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Khanna’s delegation had gone there as part of a fact-finding trip to see how the occupation affects Palestinian communities.

What did Khanna say the settlers were carrying?

Khanna also told Reuters, “I saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers, 21- and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us, 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.”

Khanna aide Cameron Kasky wrote on X that he was there when the congressman’s group was detained, saying: “The IDF showed up to back up the settlers, not the US congressman.”

Ro and I visited the destroyed village of Zanuta and the site of an EU-funded school that got burned down by settlers.

It was here that we got intercepted and captured by settlers wielding American-made rifles. The IDF showed up to back up the settlers, not the U.S. congressman. pic.twitter.com/4ZWssgB2p5

— Cameron Kasky (@camkasky) July 11, 2026

Khanna added that the encounter illustrated “the arrogance of power of a power that has had no accountability, total impunity and it’s created a toxic culture of oppression”.

The IDF gave a different version of events. In a statement to the BBC, the military said troops and police responded to a report of settlers blocking vehicles, then dispersed the civilians and let the group continue on its way.

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How did the delegation get free?

Khanna said his team contacted the US Embassy in Jerusalem and Israeli police while they were held up. According to his aide, police officers eventually arrived and the group was released.

Speaking to the New York Times, Khanna said the encounter left him feeling powerless for the first time in a long while, despite the privilege he holds in daily life. He said he wondered what it must be like for Palestinians to hold that kind of power over an American lawmaker, even briefly.

He described the young settlers and soldiers involved as showing little concern that they were detaining Americans, even after being told a US embassy was tracking the situation.

Asked by Reuters whether he’s considering a 2028 run, Khanna said he is thinking about it seriously, and that the West Bank trip has only strengthened that pull.

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What’s happening in the West Bank?

Roughly 700,000 Israelis live across some 160 settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel took control of the territory in the 1967 war, alongside about 3.3 million Palestinians. The settlements are considered illegal under international law by the UN and most of the international community.

Restrictions imposed since 1967 have kept the West Bank from building a self-sustaining economy, and those limits grew tighter after October 2023. Nearly 300,000 Palestinians have lost jobs in the West Bank and Israel since then. Human rights group Yesh Din reports that no Israeli has been indicted over the killing of a Palestinian since the war began.

A UN commission of inquiry concluded in June that Israeli forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, amounting to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Gaza, along with war crimes in the West Bank.

Khanna has been one of the more vocal critics in Congress of both the Gaza war and the West Bank occupation, often breaking from his own party’s leadership on the issue. In May, he criticized the Democratic National Committee for leaving Gaza out of its review of the party’s 2024 election loss, arguing that unconditional support for Netanyahu’s government cost Democrats votes in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

(With inputs from agencies)

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