Israel moves to deport 14 foreign activists held at West Bank olive harvest

Israel intends to deport 14 foreign nationals who were detained on Friday in the central West Bank together with three Palestinians, Israeli police said. According to The Times of Israel, police described the foreigners as "anti-Israel" and said they had been arrested on suspicion of disturbing public order, while questioning of the three Palestinians was still under way.

A police statement carried by the Hebrew-language Telegram channel Abu Ali Express said the group was detained close to Ras Karkar, questioned by officers of the Judea and Samaria district, and that the foreign citizens were then handed to the Population Authority for a hearing ahead of their removal from Israel. The Palestinian activist group Faz3a, quoted by The Times of Israel, said the detentions took place during an olive harvest in Kafr Ni'ma, a village in the Ramallah area.

What police say the group intended

Police told The Times of Israel that interrogation of the foreigners showed they planned to produce what police called "anti-Israel media campaigns", and that some of them back the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, known as BDS, which campaigns for economic and cultural pressure on Israel. Police did not say how many of the 14 were alleged to support it.

News.co.il reported that the suspicions against the group also included violating a lawful order, and that, according to police, the investigation had raised suspicion that some of those involved came to the area intending to stir friction and confrontation. Neither report published evidence for these allegations beyond the police account.

The activist group's account

Faz3a gave a different picture of who was detained and how. By its count, the 17 people held were made up of 12 volunteers from abroad, a pair of journalists who are also foreign nationals, the two Palestinians who own the land being harvested, and a single Faz3a activist. That breakdown has not been confirmed by police, whose statement referred only to 14 foreigners and three Palestinians.

The group also said that settlers attacked the harvesters and kept them from leaving until soldiers and police arrived to carry out the arrests, The Times of Israel reported. Police statements quoted in the three reports did not address that claim. The Times of Israel added that footage released by settler activists shows some of the detainees getting onto a bus belonging to the Mateh Binyamin Development Company.

Where this happened

The reports place the incident in slightly different ways. Faz3a names Kafr Ni'ma, a Palestinian village near Ramallah. The police statement refers to the vicinity of Ras Karkar, and News.co.il locates that in Binyamin, the Hebrew name Israelis use for the area north of Jerusalem around Ramallah, where Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages sit close to one another. Mateh Binyamin, the name on the bus company cited in the footage, is the Hebrew name of the Israeli regional authority for settlements in that area.

The police unit involved, the Judea and Samaria district, is the branch of the Israel Police responsible for the West Bank. Judea and Samaria is the term the Israeli government uses for the territory.

How removal works

The foreigners were not deported on the spot. Under the process described in the police statement, they were passed to Israel's Population and Immigration Authority, the government body that handles visas, residency and the removal of foreign nationals. News.co.il described the next step as a hearing at which their removal from Israel would be considered, while The Times of Israel reported that they are set to be deported. The reports therefore differ on whether a final decision has already been made.

Competing language

The outlets used markedly different terms for the same people. Police called them anti-Israel. Abu Ali Express and News.co.il, both Hebrew-language channels, called them anarchists, and Abu Ali Express put the phrase olive harvest in quotation marks, describing the event as a provocation. Faz3a described the foreigners as volunteers and journalists taking part in a harvest alongside Palestinian landowners. Readers should treat each of these labels as the view of the party using it.

What the reports do not say

• None of the reports names the foreign nationals or states which countries they are from.
• No report says whether a hearing date has been set or whether the Population and Immigration Authority has issued any decision.
• Faz3a's claim that settlers attacked and held the group has not been answered by police or the military in any of the reports, and the Israel Defense Forces is not quoted at all.
• The police have not said what lawful order the group is suspected of violating, or what happened to the three Palestinians after questioning.
• Police have not addressed Faz3a's statement that two of the foreigners were journalists.