United States Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander says he has been released from Israeli military custody with a warning after being detained alongside dozens of volunteers helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank.
But several dozen others, including rabbis and international volunteers, remain in detention, according to Lander, who called for them to be released immediately after the incident Wednesday.
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“I’ve been released from [Israeli army] custody with a ‘warning,’ apparently because of my public profile,” Lander wrote on X. “I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee.”
Lander, a Jewish American and former New York City comptroller, was among approximately 80 volunteers detained by Israeli soldiers and police near the village of Nahalin, outside Bethlehem, according to the Israeli organisation Rabbis for Human Rights.
The group included American, Israeli, Palestinian, British and Canadian volunteers.
Becca Strober, a representative of the Protect the Harvest Coalition, which helped organise the olive harvest, told Al Jazeera that the group had been picking olives at the invitation of a Palestinian family for several hours when the Israeli army arrived.
“It was a nice, peaceful day,” he said. “There was no conflict. There was no settler violence. There was no violence of any kind.”
According to Strober, after a while, soldiers began checking the volunteers’ IDs, and soon after, issued an order declaring the area a closed military zone. They then detained the group, first in the field and later at a police station.
