US Congressman Says He Was Detained by Settlers in the West Bank
The Democratic congressman Ro Khanna says his vehicle was surrounded by armed Israeli settlers near a village in the southern occupied West Bank, and that he was held for more than an hour before police intervened. He said the settlers carried US-made rifles and criticised nearby soldiers for appearing at ease with them. The Israeli military denied detaining any visitors but said it had dispersed civilians unlawfully blocking vehicles. The incident, surfacing over the weekend, has drawn attention to settler violence in the territory.
A sitting US lawmaker held at gunpoint by settlers of an allied state is the kind of episode that punctures the abstraction of the debate over the West Bank, and it lands as settler violence against Palestinians has surged and as Washington’s own weapons turn up in settler hands. Khanna, a prominent progressive critic of Israeli government policy, has used the incident to press for accountability and to question the military’s posture towards the settlers it is meant to police. The Israeli denial, and the narrower admission that troops dispersed people blocking a road, is the familiar gap between the official account and the eyewitness one. It feeds a widening rift in American politics over unconditional support for the Israeli government, and over the occupied territories where the ceasefire in Gaza has done nothing to slow the settlements. Watch whether the episode draws a formal US response, and how it plays into the Congressional argument over arms.