Rep. Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers during his Wednesday trip to the West Bank.
The California Democrat said Saturday that his van was surrounded while touring, and people armed with M4 rifles detained his group for over an hour.
He and his team then contacted the U.S. Embassy and waited for Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
But upon arriving at the scene and speaking with the settlers, the soldiers sided with the settlers and moved a car to block the road.
“Our security person goes and talks to the IDF soldiers, and they said, ‘We don’t care that there’s an American in the car. We don’t care about a congressman. We don’t care what the American Embassy is saying,’” Mr. Khanna told CNN.
He said the incident occurred as he was visiting an elementary school that was destroyed by Israeli settlers, “and these hoodlums come in with machine guns, an M4, an American-made machine gun, and they detain us.”
“I’m certainly probably the first American politician who’s been detained by the IDF and Israeli settlers,” Mr. Khanna said in a Reuters video.
The IDF stated its personnel did not participate in the blockade, saying troops were dispatched, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians and reopened the blocked road.
Mr. Khanna insisted IDF soldiers along with settlers were involved in his detention and called on the Israeli government to prosecute them.
“I am grateful to David Brownstein of the American Embassy for helping rescue us. I expect Israel will prosecute the violent settlers and IDF soldiers who detained American citizens,” he said in a statement.
While Mr. Khanna has not spoken with the White House or the State Department, he plans to ask them to “get a comment about what the Israeli government plans to do with these four IDF soldiers.”
The U.S. Embassy and Israeli government were aware of his trip ahead of time, he said, and his team was freed after communication between the legation and a high-level official in the Israeli government.
The congressman said he was there to seek an “unfiltered view” of the Israeli-occupied West Bank because politicians “unwilling to speak up for Palestinian human rights” are “morally compromised.”
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