{"id":930243,"date":"2026-07-12T17:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T17:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/930243\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T17:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T17:10:15","slug":"benjamin-netanyahu-says-there-is-vigilate-effort-in-west-bank-not-pushed-by-settlers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/930243\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Netanyahu says there is ‘vigilate effort’ in West Bank, not pushed by settlers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Netanyahu was asked about US Congressman Ro Khanna<\/a>, who said on Saturday that he was detained by settlers armed with US-made rifles during a visit to the West Bank last week.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu explained that “99% [of the settler community] are law-abiding citizens. They work. They serve in the army and so on.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a> was “working to put them under the law.”<\/p>\n

“Israel, unlike our neighbors, is a democracy is a democracy of law, and we act against those who break the law,” he concluded.<\/p>\n

Khanna, one of the Congress\u2019s most vocal critics of the Israeli government, was in the country last week, meeting with Palestinians, while he didn’t meet Israeli officials.<\/p>\n

Khanna told Reuters, speaking in the West Bank, that a day earlier, his group\u2019s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles, while touring Khirbet Zanuta \u2013 whose residents were forcibly displaced by settler raids following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just looking at it, and these hoodlums come in with machine guns \u2013 M4, an American-made machine gun \u2013 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,\u201d Khanna said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon 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.<\/p>\n

IDF sources doubted Khanna\u2019s version of the events, saying no senior IDF officials were sent to the scene, as it was resolved quickly. The soldiers were not \u201con the side\u201d of the settlers, the sources said.<\/p>\n

Reuters and Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Netanyahu was asked about US Congressman Ro Khanna, who said on Saturday that he was detained by settlers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":930244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[99,50,61024,39494,17262,161859,375113,47142],"class_list":["post-930243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-settlements","tag-settlers","tag-west-bank","tag-west-bank-israel","tag-west-bank-population","tag-west-bank-violence"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116908118950063864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/930244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}