US congressman Ro Khanna detained by armed Israeli settlers in West Bank

US congressman Ro Khanna was held for 90 minutes by armed Israeli settlers during a visit to the occupied West Bank, he has said. Khanna, 49, was in a van with his team on Wednesday when they were surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles, he told Reuters. Writing on X, the Democratic congressman said that when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrived, “they sided with the settlers and continued our detention”. The IDF said in a statement that troops and police officers acted after receiving a report that settlers had blocked vehicles in the area. “Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” it said. Khanna was visiting the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta on a fact-finding trip to examine the impact of Israeli occupation. “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,” he said. “And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made 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.” While detained, an aide appealed to the US Embassy in Jerusalem for help, and the group was released after police officers intervened. Khanna, a father-of-two, is mulling a presidential run in 2028. The incident underscores the deepening controversy over Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the area in 1967; an estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them. The settlements are illegal under international law. Separately, prominent Israeli figures have called for the UK to ban trade with settlements in the occupied West Bank.