New Delhi, July 11 -- WEST BANK - The van carrying Democratic U.S. Representative Ro Khanna of California had just passed through the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet south of Hebron whose school had been destroyed and whose residents had been driven out by settler raids, when the armed men appeared. They carried M4 rifles. American-made.

The group was held for over an hour on a dirt road in the southern West Bank, the congressman and his aide surrounded by men who do not answer to any government order but who operate, in Khanna's account, with a confidence that comes from knowing no one will stop them. "These hoodlums come in with machine guns," Khanna said in a conversation with Reuters, "M4, an American-made machine gun, ...