Renowned American political activist Noam Chomsky, who is an outspoken critic of Israel, has described being denied entry into the West Bank as "unusual."

Palestinian official Mustafa Barghouti had invited the linguist to lecture at the Palestinian Bir Zeit University on Monday.

Chomsky said he had been held up for hours at the Allenby crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Sunday, and was ultimately denied entry into Palestinian land.

He described the decision as "an unusual, if not unique act of interference with the independence of the university."

"They did not like the kinds of things I say about Israel and they did not like that I was only talking at Bir Zeit and not at an Israeli university too," Chomsky told Israeli media from Jordan.

The 81-year-old scholar is a professor of linguistics at the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has repeatedly spoken out against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

After Israel’s 2009 war in the Gaza Strip, Chomsky said, "supporters of Israel are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration."

Israel launched a military attack against the Gaza Strip on December 2008 and continued pounding the costal sliver through January 2009. The three week onslaught left about 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead.

(Press TV)