NAHALIN, West Bank — A morning spent picking olives alongside Palestinian farmers ended in Israeli custody Wednesday for Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for Congress in New York’s 10th District. He was free about three hours later.
Lander posted a video on X at 6:29 a.m. Eastern saying soldiers had detained him, along with rabbis and other volunteers, near Nahalin, south of Bethlehem.
At 9:35 a.m., he announced his release in a second post. “I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee,” he wrote.
Israeli police said authorities ultimately released 72 people detained at the harvest. Four foreign nationals, however, were set for deportation hearings Thursday, Reuters reported.
The Israeli military said a number of harvesters, accompanied by dozens of other people, arrived for an uncoordinated harvest near Beitar Illit, an Israeli settlement. Harvesting in that area, it said, requires a request to the relevant authorities before the olive season begins, a step it called necessary for security and public order.
Citing the security risk of an uncoordinated harvest near an Israeli community, the military said soldiers, Border Police and officers from the police’s Judea and Samaria District — Israel’s term for the West Bank — went to the scene and detained those present.
The landowner, it said, was told he must coordinate the harvest on his plot and was given contact information to arrange one at a later date.
That account was disputed by Lander and the organizations that brought volunteers to the grove. Rabbis for Human Rights and T’ruah said about 80 people accompanied the farmers.
Organizers said participants had not known the area was under a military closure, and that they offered to leave after soldiers arrived.
“We did nothing more provocative than harvest olives.”
Lander said the Israeli Embassy in Washington recommended that his group coordinate with local authorities before the trip, but did not say approval was mandatory.
Police said Lander was released after officers learned he was a congressional candidate. Lander also linked his early release to his public profile; other participants, he said, were held for roughly nine hours.
The military stressed that authorized harvests are continuing. About 100 coordinated harvests have been carried out across the West Bank so far, yielding many dozens of tons of olives without unusual incidents, it said, adding that only harvesters will be allowed into areas designated for coordinated harvesting.
The episode unfolded amid a West Bank olive harvest season punctuated by settler violence and tighter limits on some Palestinian farmers’ access to their land. Wednesday’s detentions added to questions over those restrictions and the treatment of foreign volunteers who join the harvests.
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