Harvesting olives or headlines? Lander’s detention fuels West Bank dispute

Israeli forces detained US Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander and dozens of other participants in a Palestinian olive harvest on Wednesday, prompting conflicting accounts over whether the group had entered an area requiring military authorization.

Lander, a former New York City comptroller, was subsequently released. The gathering took place on agricultural land belonging to the Palestinian village of Nahalin, near the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit in the West Bank. American and Israeli rabbis and activists were accompanying Palestinian farmers.

Israeli police said the harvesters and accompanying activists arrived near the settlement’s security fence without the required prior coordination. According to the police statement, soldiers, Border Police and local officers detained those involved and took them to a police station. Police said Lander was released after authorities learned he was a congressional candidate.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry accused Lander of deliberately seeking a confrontation, describing his participation as “harvesting headlines.” The ministry said his team had contacted Israeli representatives in the United States before the visit and had been told that coordination with the relevant authorities was necessary.

A military official told i24NEWS that Palestinians did not submit a request to coordinate harvesting in the area in question. Therefore, it does not appear on the area’s coordination maps. The official also said the plot in question 'requires only a small number of harvesters to collect its produce. The security establishment views the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.'

Rabbis for Human Rights told The Times of Israel that the grove did not require advance coordination. The newspaper reported that a map distributed by the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration did not identify the location as an area subject to that requirement. The military maintained that coordination was necessary despite the plot’s absence from the map.

OCHA documented 199 harvest-related settler attacks between September 1 and October 12, resulting in one Palestinian death, 124 injuries and damage to more than 2,500 trees and saplings. These figures cover incidents across the West Bank, rather than the Nahalin detention itself.

Israeli and international volunteers accompany farmers in an effort to deter attacks and document incidents. Several Palestinians in Nahalin told NPR that fears of settler violence had prevented them from harvesting their trees since October 2023.