It's been a bloody start to the annual olive harvest in the West Bank, with Israeli settlers stoning and murdering farmers, and burning and bulldozing hundreds of trees, as the Israeli military reinforces the violence by blocking Palestinians' access to their land through backwards bureaucracy.
Nonprofits like Protect the Harvest, which sprung up earlier this year, arrange for international volunteers, including U.S. citizens, to travel to the occupied West Bank and accompany Palestinian farmers as they pick olives during the harvest season. More than 80,000 Palestinian families depend on the harvest for their livelihoods. However, Israeli settlers are still terrorizing these families at an unprecedented rate as they try to access their crops. Sometimes, volunteers accompanying Palestinians are also detained by the Israeli military.
On Wednesday, New York congressional candidate Brad Lander became one of those targeted when he was detained by IDF soldiers for helping Palestinian farmers with their olive harvest near Bethlehem in the West Bank. Councilmember Julie Won said she was also detained by the IDF for an hour this week, after being "raided every single day." Won was in Tarmasia, in the West Bank—an area in which she said 80 percent of the residents are Palestinian American. While Lander was released after three hours in Israeli detention, both elected officials' experiences highlight the continuing dangers Palestinians continue to face this olive harvesting season.
"We were threatened with arrest and deportation every single day. It's almost unreal because when you're there, you're just shell shocked. You're like, 'How are you allowed to treat people with such lawlessness?,'" Won told Hell Gate Thursday. "When I was detained by the IDF, I was released because I called the U.S. embassy. Regular Palestinians don’t have a get-out-of-jail card like that."