Israeli forces detained US Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander and around 90 other volunteers, including American rabbis, as they helped Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday (October 21). Lander was released hours later, while dozens of other volunteers remained in custody.
The incident came amid a harvest season marked by escalating violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers seeking to gather their crops. Rights groups have described this year's olive harvest as among the most violent in recent history, citing reports of theft, clashes and arson attacks.
Lander, an ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a former New York City comptroller, said his detention was an attempt to undermine Palestinians' rights to their land.
“The occupation is a crime under international law,” Lander wrote on social media after his detention. “Harvesting olives isn't a crime under any law I know.”
After his release, he said the detentions were another attempt by the Israeli military to undermine Palestinians' right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads and live in their homes.
The Israeli military said the farmers and volunteers had failed to obtain prior approval to conduct the harvest near an Israeli community, citing security concerns. It later described the arrival of dozens of activists as an attempt to provoke tensions and disrupt the harvesting process.
Israeli police said Lander was among those detained but was released after authorities learned he was a congressional candidate. The volunteers were taken to a police facility.
Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organisation, said the group had been accompanying Palestinian farmers near a village close to Bethlehem when Israeli forces arrived. The organisation said the volunteers could not have known in advance that the area had been declared a closed military zone.
In a separate incident, Reuters footage from Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah, showed Palestinian farmers harvesting olives as Israeli settlers watched nearby. One settler blocked a path, while another told a Reuters journalist in Hebrew that the land belonged to Jews and Arabs should not be there.
In Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, Israeli forces prevented villagers from reaching their olive groves, according to village council head Eid Hamad. He said troops entered the village before volunteers due to join the harvest arrived.
The military said it was checking the reported incidents.
This year's harvest has also brought tighter restrictions on Palestinian access to farmland. The anti-settlement group Peace Now said the Israeli military had expanded by nearly 30 per cent the area of farmland Palestinians could not access without prior approval, bringing it to 34 square miles (88 square kilometres). The military declined to comment on the specific figures but said farmers must coordinate access to areas under Israeli security control.
Jill Jacobs, chief executive of T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and one of the American rabbis detained, accused the Israeli government of using military restrictions to force Palestinian communities from their land.
“The Israeli government is actively advancing the forced displacement of Palestinian communities across the West Bank, using its military to deny Palestinians access to their land and intimidate those who stand alongside them,” Jacobs said.
Lander is running in the November 3 US elections to represent New York's 10th congressional district. He defeated incumbent US Representative Dan Goldman in the Democratic primary in a contest seen as a test of the party's stance towards Israel. Both candidates have criticised Israel, but Lander described the war in Gaza as genocide.
He was not the first US politician detained in the West Bank this year. US Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said Israeli forces detained him during a visit in July.
(With agency inputs from Reuters and AP via PTI)