Israeli settlers detain Ro Khanna during US congressman’s trip to West Bank
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said Saturday that he was detained by Israeli settlers “brandishing American-made M4s” while visiting the West Bank this week.
“When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention,” Khanna, D-Calif., said on X. “They made a huge mistake. You will be hearing more soon.”
Khanna, The New York Times reported, was visiting the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khirbet Zanuta. The village was abandoned in 2023 because of settler violence.
“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed,” Khanna told Reuters. “They had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it.”
A car carrying armed men pulled up and blocked the road out of the village, and started swearing at Khanna and his team in Hebrew and Arabic, The Times reported. Accounts, photographs and video footage show them kicking the tires of Khanna’s minibus as well. Following this, The Times said, a Jeep with additional men arrived.
Two cars from the Israeli military pulled up. Khanna thought they were there to help him, but they smoked cigarettes and talked to the settlers, he said. When the settlers left, Khanna said, the soldiers moved a car to block the road.
Cameron Kasky, an aide to Khanna who organized the trip, said the American delegation appealed to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help. Eventually, Kasky told Reuters, a group of officers appearing to be police intervened and they were released.
The Israeli military said troops and police officers stepped in after getting a report about settlers blocking vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta.
“Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” the military said, according to Reuters.
Kasky said on X the Israeli military lied about the role the IDF played in his and Khanna’s detainment.
“The IDF showed up and started goofing off and smoking cigarettes with the extremist group,” Kasky said.
What Khanna saw on his trip to the West Bank
During his visit to the West Bank, Khanna talked to the mayors of Bethlehem, Beit Shair and Beit Jala about restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to water, the Times wrote.
Khanna also visited a school in Al-Mughayyir, where a 14-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli settler. He spoke to local business owners and families as well. One of them was the family of Awdah Hathaleen, who was killed by an Israeli settler.
“In Palestine, I felt first as someone who was brown,” Khanna told The Times. “We really saw the apartheid-like conditions, the inequality.”
Four settlers arrested Saturday after attacking journalists
Days after Khanna was detained, settlers attacked a group of journalists covering the one-year anniversary of the killing of Palestinian-American man Saif Musallet. Israeli settlers beat Musallet to death in the West Bank last July.
On Saturday, four settlers were arrested, according to CNN, whose journalists reported being among those who were attacked.
Minutes after the journalists arrived at the location near the village of Sinjil where Musallet was killed, Israeli settlers “descended on the area,” CNN reported.
Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist at the scene, said the settlers spotted them as Saif Musallet’s father, Kamel, was visiting the place where settlers killed his son.
“They drove toward us, blocked the road, and attacked,” Nathaniel wrote on X.
Four settlers armed with wooden and metal rods and stone blocked the road with their car, CNN reported. One of them brandished a knife and attempted to puncture the tire of a CNN vehicle.
Settlers then jumped on the vehicle behind CNN’s, which carried another group of journalists. They smashed that vehicle’s windshield.
“The Israel Police and the (Israel Defense Forces) view any manifestation of violence or causing damage to property very seriously, especially when it concerns media personnel performing their work,” police said in a statement to CNN.
Nathaniel, though, said the Israel Defense Forces “drove right past the settlers who attacked us, and began interrogating us on what we were doing there.”
Everyone ultimately made it out safely, Nathaniel added.
Increase in Israeli settler violence
While settler violence has been a longstanding issue in the occupied West Bank, experts, including those at the United Nations, say that it has surged since Oct. 7, 2023, when the war in Gaza started after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel. About 73,110 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.
“Relentless attacks by the settler-colonial movement, carried out with the support and acquiescence of the Israeli State, have become a daily terror in Palestinian lives, sowing fear, uncertainty, and profound insecurity that inevitably compels the forcible displacement of the indigenous population,” the UN experts said in June. “The escalating violence, carried out with full impunity, serves as an instrument of coercion in the hands of the occupying power, facilitating ethnic cleansing.”
At least 13 Palestinians have been killed, and close to 500 injured, in five months, the UN experts said, outpacing figures from previous years.
Amnesty International said Israeli settlers have raided Palestinian homes and villages, threatened them with death; beat them, cut off access to water and electricity; and destroyed and stolen property and village infrastructure.
“Palestinians who have attempted to return have found their villages fenced off or destroyed, or have faced renewed settler attacks, harassment and intimidation, forcing them to flee again,” the organization said in June.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
