TEL AVIV — Israeli security forces on Wednesday detained dozens of volunteer monitors in an olive grove near Bethlehem, including a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress. They also sealed off Palestinian farmland elsewhere in the West Bank and arrested a well-known anti-settlement activist, extending weeks of conflict in which the fall olive harvest has become one of the most volatile fronts in the days before Israel’s national elections.
Brad Lander, a former New York City comptroller now running for the U.S. House, was among about 90 volunteers detained on the lands of the village of Nahalin, according to the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights.
The volunteers, Israelis and Americans, had come to stand alongside Palestinian farmers harvesting from their trees in hopes of preventing a repeat of attacks by Israeli settlers that have marred the harvest throughout the West Bank.
The Israeli government has faced growing criticism, and new sanctions by European allies, for failing to control a wave of violent settler attacks across the region.
Wednesday’s incidents follow a string of attacks by settlers in the West Bank in recent days, including an assault Friday that left Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine with four fractured vertebrae and a broken rib. She was released from the hospital Wednesday.
Over the weekend, a group of European diplomats was assaulted, allegedly by Israeli settlers, outside the West Bank town of Taybeh.
Activists have accused Israeli policy and military forces of standing by during attacks and placing more restrictions on Palestinian farmers and volunteer monitors than the settlers.
Lander, in a post on social media, said that pattern was repeated Wednesday.
“We’re being arrested by the Israeli military for harvesting olives when we’re not causing any problem or threats to anyone,” Lander said in a video that was published by Israeli media outlets before he was put into an Israeli police vehicle. “Harvesting olives is not a crime under any law.”
Lander and others were later released, officials said.
The Israel Defense Forces said the group was involved in an “uncoordinated olive harvest” in an area near the settlement of Beitar Illit that requires preapproval from security officials.
“Harvesting in this area requires a request to be submitted to the relevant authorities in advance of the start of the olive harvest season,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. “This coordination is necessary to ensure the security of the area and maintain public order.”
Israeli police said Wednesday that 72 people detained in the incident had been released, and that an additional four would be transferred to immigration authorities for removal hearings.
Lander has campaigned as a self-described liberal Zionist and defender of Palestinians, appearing with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The two ran against each other in last year’s New York mayoral election, but wound up cross-endorsing under the city’s ranked-choice voting system. Lander defeated a pro-Israel incumbent, Rep. Dan Goldman, in a June congressional primary, after vowing to be among the Jewish members of Congress “most willing to stand up loud for Palestinian human rights.”
Israeli human rights groups said the detention was one of the largest mass arrests in years in the West Bank, raising concerns that the government was clamping down in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote.
“The army has effectively been abandoning Palestinians to settler violence, failing in its duty to protect them,” said Ziv Stahl, executive director of the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.
At another harvest about 20 miles north, near the village of Deir Jarir, soldiers turned Palestinians farmers away from their picking and declared the groves a closed military zone.
Local officials said settlers from nearby outposts had been active in the area before Israeli soldiers arrived and stop the picking.
Eid Hammad, the mayor of Deir Jarir, told The Washington Post that troops “stormed our village” and informed him that “farmers are not allowed to reach out to the olive groves for harvesting.”
Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, an Israeli activist who filmed the attack on Levine and helped pull her to safety, was arrested in Taybeh on Wednesday, according to a lawyer familiar with the case.
Police with a warrant detained Khrzhanovskiy, who documents settler activities under the blogger handle “Andrey X” under suspicion of “demonstrating public identification with a terrorist organization” and other potential charges, according to documents provided to his lawyers.
Khrzhanovskiy was later released. It was unclear whether he was formally charged.
Suheir Hashimeh contributed to this report.
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