14 ‘anti-Israel’ activists arrested in West Bank during Palestinian olive harvest to be deported

Fourteen “anti-Israel” foreigners are facing deportation after they were arrested alongside three Palestinians in the central West Bank on suspicion of disturbing public order, police said Sunday.

During the detainees’ interrogation, it emerged that they intended to produce “anti-Israel media campaigns,” and that some of them support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, police said, adding that the investigation of the three Palestinians is ongoing.

Israel has restricted the entry of foreign BDS activists for years. A law passed in 2017 allows authorities to deny entry to foreign nationals who publicly call for a boycott of Israel or work on behalf of organizations that advocate such boycotts, including boycotts targeting West Bank settlements. The law does not apply to Israeli citizens or permanent residents.

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Israeli forces detained the 17 people during an olive harvest on Friday in the Ramallah-area village of Kafr Ni’ma, according to Palestinian activist group Faz3a. The activist group said the detainees included 12 foreign volunteers, two foreign journalists, two Palestinian landowners and a Palestinian Faz3a activist.

The group claimed settlers attacked them and “held them against their will until soldiers and police arrived” and made the arrests.

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Footage published by settler activists showed some of the detainees boarding a Mateh Binyamin Development Company bus.

Mateh Binyamin is the Hebrew name for the area’s settler municipal authority. The settler activists said the municipal authority itself sent the bus to transport the detainees to the police station in the city-settlement of Modiin Illit after the “planned harvest provocation adjacent to the settlement of Sde Efraim.”

The detentions came amid a series of similar incidents during this year’s olive harvest.

On November 1, police said 13 foreign nationals had been deported after allegedly violating a closed military zone order near the Ramallah-area village of Lubban al-Gharbiya while assisting Palestinians with the olive harvest.

Their lawyer, Alon Sapir, told The Times of Israel that the group consisted of 15 foreign nationals who had come to assist Palestinians with the olive harvest. When soldiers arrived at the scene, they presented the group with a closed military zone order that they said had been issued for the area that same day.

On October 21, Israeli forces detained more than 70 foreign and Israeli activists who had joined Palestinians harvesting olives in the West Bank, including US congressional candidate Brad Lander, who has since been elected to Congress.

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