Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there is a “vigilante effort” in the West Bank, but it’s pushed by “150 juvenile delinquents that are not a part of that [the settler] community,” during a Sunday interview with NBC.
Netanyahu was asked about US Congressman Ro Khanna, who said on Saturday that he was detained by settlers armed with US-made rifles during a visit to the West Bank last week.
Netanyahu explained that “99% [of the settler community] are law-abiding citizens. They work. They serve in the army and so on.”
He added that Israel is a country of laws which takes people who break the law to court, saying that he “didn’t want vigilantes of any kind” and that his government was “working to put them under the law.”
“Israel, unlike our neighbors, is a democracy is a democracy of law, and we act against those who break the law,” he concluded.
Khanna says he was detained by settlers
Khanna, one of the Congress’s most vocal critics of the Israeli government, was in the country last week, meeting with Palestinians, while he didn’t meet Israeli officials.
Khanna told Reuters, speaking in the West Bank, that a day earlier, his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles, while touring Khirbet Zanuta – whose residents were forcibly displaced by settler raids following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“We were just looking at it, 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,” Khanna said.
The IDF said troops and police officers intervened after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media near Khirbet Zanuta.
“Upon receiving the report, IDF forces were dispatched to the scene. They dispersed the Israeli civilians within a short time, thereby reopening the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking the road.
IDF sources doubted Khanna’s version of the events, saying no senior IDF officials were sent to the scene, as it was resolved quickly. The soldiers were not “on the side” of the settlers, the sources said.
Reuters and Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.
