Both the IDF and members of US Representative Ro Khanna's entourage released additional information on Monday about the incident last week in which he was detained (his entourage and their vehicle were prevented from traveling) for around an hour during a visit to the West Bank.
According to both on- and off-the-record information, extensive questioning of both sides and newly released video evidence, this picture that emerges is in some ways less worrying than the original reports, but in some ways shows what a quagmire Israel has tangled itself in in parts of the West Bank and in its crashing levels of support in the US.
It seems in the end that the Jewish settlers who stopped Khanna's vehicle from leaving the area it was in did believe that he had traveled illegally into a closed military zone.
But this point does not really work in Israel's favor.
Khanna had said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M-4 rifles, while touring Khirbet Zanuta – whose Palestinian residents were forcibly displaced by settler raids in December 2024.
In the end, it turned out that the area was no longer a closed zone, and even when it was, it probably had been so to keep vigilante settlers away from harassing the Palestinians there, not to prevent a prominent US Congressman from touring the site.
However, Khanna did not do himself any favors here either.
Khanna did not coordinate with IDF
He did not coordinate his travel through the area with the IDF, such that not only was there no official protection for him, but IDF officials also did not know he was in the area to give special instructions to soldiers should they by chance encounter him.
But this also does not really help Israel, as vigilante settlers do not have the right to take the law into their own hands and detain people.
Maybe they could report the incident to the police, as they did, and even keep an eye on someone suspicious, but not detain them.
What follows next is a series of confusing and incompetent actions, which somewhat gets Israel off the hook of accusations of deliberate harassment, but does not entirely help since Israelis are in charge in the area, and so responsible for messes.
The settlers reported a suspicious car in a closed area to the police; the police reported it to the IDF, which sent some young soldiers to check out the situation.
Soldiers did not actively remove settlers
Contrary to original IDF reports, the IDF soldiers did not really actively try to move the settlers out of the area, as they viewed them as having helped them and the police locate a suspicious car.
As far as the soldiers were concerned, they were babysitting the suspicious car temporarily until the police showed up to handle the situation.
However, since it in the end was not even a closed zone, the soldiers had no right to keep Khanna until police arrived.
Moreover, at one point, Nadav Weiman, who was with Khanna, approached the soldiers and informed them that Khanna was with the entourage and that the entourage had spoken to the police headquarters, which had said the soldiers should let Khanna leave.
Not only did the soldiers not let Khanna leave, but one of them asked Weiman whether he was an official in Breaking the Silence (he is), as if ready to punish Khanna to get back at Weiman for being a member of a group many in the IDF dislike.
The soldiers said they would wait for a police official to show up physically before letting Khanna go.
This part of the standoff went on for either 20 or 40 minutes, depending on which side you ask.
Eventually, a police official arrived, and minutes earlier, the settlers had run from the scene, as if to signal they understood they should not have been there.
The IDF has said it identified at least one settler, who was an IDF officer off duty and is "clarifying" with him regarding his role - something which sounds like a small censure, but not major disciplinary actions.
What the soldiers could have done, once they heard a senior US official was there, was to call the police headquarters themselves if they did not believe Weiman, instead of making Khanna wait until a police official arrived.
Or they could have just let them go, given that Khanna was a senior US official and, other than driving into an area that might have been questionable, appeared to pose no threat.
Going forward, Israel would need to ensure that settler vigilantes cannot detain third parties outside of their specific village security zone, and to prosecute settlers who take the law into their own hands, well-intentioned or not. Also, IDF soldiers would need to be ready to treat US officials and other Western diplomats as the VIPs that they are, not leaving them sitting and detained for an hour out of a failure to understand the situation.
This is important not only as a matter of competence, but to avoid falling into the trap of future visitors who may seek to set up Israeli soldiers for a fall so as to embarrass Israel in the global sphere.