“Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” the IDF said.

Khanna was visiting the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta, on a fact-finding visit to look at the impact of Israeli occupation of the area.

The politician, a father-of-two, is mulling over a presidential run in 2028.

“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” he said.

“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.

While they were detained, an aide who was with Khanna said they made appeals to the US Embassy in Jerusalem for help, and were released after a group of police officers intervened.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are illegal under international law.