US congressman Ro Khanna ‘detained by armed Israeli settlers’ in West Bank | World News

A US politician said he was detained by armed Israeli settlers during a visit to the West Bank.

Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding US-made M4 rifles while touring an area where residents face frequent attacks.

Cameron Kasky, an aide who was in the group, said they were held for more than an hour and made appeals to the US embassy in Jerusalem for help before a group of what appeared to be police officers intervened.

“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,” Mr Khanna 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.”

The Israeli military said troops and police officers intervened after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta, a small Palestinian hamlet whose residents were forcibly displaced by violent settler raids following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

“Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” the military said.

Mr Khanna, a progressive member of the the US House of Representatives said he was “strongly considering” running for president.

Israel‘s conduct toward Palestinians has emerged as a flashpoint in Democratic politics ahead of November’s US midterm elections, contributing to primary defeats for some incumbent lawmakers targeted by left-wing challengers who accused them of supporting Israel’s right-wing government.

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Mr Khanna said he believed his party’s establishment was “clueless about how much of a moral test Palestine, Gaza and Israel have become”.

“If you’re unwilling to speak up for Palestinian human rights, if you’re unwilling to speak up against the genocide in Gaza, the apartheid in the West Bank, then you are morally compromised,” he said.

Israel rejects allegations it carried out a genocide in Gaza or that it institutes an apartheid regime in the West Bank, which has a population of about 3 million Palestinians and around 500,000 Jewish settlers.

Most countries and ​the UN regard Israeli settlements ⁠in the West Bank as illegal under international law, but Israel rejects that position, saying the West Bank is disputed territory where there has been ​a Jewish presence for thousands of years.

Palestinians view the West Bank, together with Gaza and East Jerusalem, ​as part of a ⁠Palestinian state.