On a hot Wednesday afternoon in the Palestinian village of Zanuta, California Rep. Ro Khanna walked through the ruins of a Palestinian school demolished by Israeli settlers several years earlier.

In 2023, Israeli settlers took firearms and bulldozers to the village, destroying the school and other buildings and displacing dozens of Bedouin Palestinian residents from their homes.

While standing amid the rubble, one of Khanna’s staffers spotted an Israeli settler wearing a large smile on his face with an assault rifle draped around his shoulder, peering at the group through a broken window.

Khanna and his small delegation of his staffer Cameron Kasky, their driver, and a security guard hurried back into their van, Khanna and Kasky, a Parkland school shooting survivor and former congressional candidate, said in interviews with The Intercept.

Settlers had parked their car directly in front of them, blocking their exit along a narrow dirt road that juts from Highway 60 with rocky slopes and dry grass on both sides.