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Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani in Rome, Italy, on May 08, 2026. [Riccardo De Luca – Anadolu Agency]
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Friday that Italians detained by Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank had “done nothing,” calling for their return to Italy, ANSA reported.
“We are following the case. They did nothing, they were just there carrying out agricultural activities, harvesting olives. We hope they can be sent back to Italy as soon as possible,” Tajani said.
The detainees were among 14 international volunteers arrested near Kafr Ni’ma, about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from Ramallah, while helping Palestinians with the olive harvest.
Among the Italians was Giorgia Lombardi, a city councilor in La Spezia and a member of the National Council of Europa Verde.
Angelo Bonelli, a lawmaker from the Green and Left Alliance and co-spokesperson for Europa Verde, said the volunteers had been attacked after Palestinian farmers were assaulted by Israeli occupiers.
He alleged that Israeli forces subsequently detained the volunteers and confiscated their passports.
Bonelli called on Italy’s Foreign Ministry and diplomatic representatives to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and release of the Italian citizens and other volunteers.
Former Chief of General Staff and leader of the Yashar party, Gadi Eisenkot holds an election rally ahead of Israeli parliamentary (Knesset) elections in Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 25, 2026. [Saeed Qaq – Anadolu Agency]
In the past, many Palestinians and Arabs followed Israeli elections closely. They did so not because they entertained illusions that a Zionist leader would deliver peace and justice, dismantle the occupation or remove illegal settlements. Rather, they feared that some Israeli leaders were worse than others. They hoped to avert the worst-case scenario.
Over time, however, that distinction gave way to the belief that all Israeli leaders were essentially the same. This is not pessimism. It is experience.
Consider, for example, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements during the Oslo peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Between 1992 and 1995, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from 111,673 to 140,235 – a rise of more than 25 per cent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), drawing on Israeli statistical records.
The same pattern continued under the Labour government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Within his first six months, Barak’s government issued tenders for 3,196 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual average under his right-wing predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Naftali Bennett formed a coalition government in June 2021 that included the Arab party Ra’am, settlement expansion continued unabated.
According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, the Bennett–Lapid government advanced plans for 7,292 settlement housing units during its first year, a 26 per cent increase over the annual average recorded under previous Netanyahu governments.
The settlements are themselves a driving force behind the occupation. They require land, and therefore land confiscation; protection, and therefore an expanded military presence; water, roads and infrastructure, and therefore the appropriation of Palestinian resources. Together, these elements deepen dispossession and generate further Israeli violence.
According to the PCBS, the West Bank contained 645 Israeli settlement sites, outposts and other occupation installations by the end of 2025, including 350 settlement outposts.
The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian Authority body, reported that Israeli authorities targeted approximately 29,335 dunums of Palestinian land through declarations of so-called “state land” between October 2023 and August 2026 – one of the largest waves of such land appropriation since Oslo.
By September 2026, the Commission had also documented the advancement or consideration of plans for more than 18,000 additional settlement housing units across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
By the end of 2023, the West Bank had experienced its deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2005.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission documented 23,827 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians and their property during 2025 alone. In the first seven months of 2026, settler attacks increased by 63 per cent compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
Typically, this violence, carried out by the Israeli occupation army and armed illegal settlers, is contextualised within the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But violence in the West Bank also serves another purpose beyond collective punishment: the confiscation of Palestinian orchards, the annexation of land, the expansion of settlements and the crushing of Palestinian resistance, including non-violent opposition to this colonial enterprise.
Any Israeli candidate in the 27 October elections who supports settlement expansion does so with full knowledge of its consequences: further dispossession, military occupation, annexation and violence.
The difference between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and politicians presented as less extreme, is often one of language, strategy and timing.
Former Israeli military chief and Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, for example, openly supports the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite his reputation as a more “moderate” alternative to Netanyahu.
Who among Israel’s leading political figures is promising to end the genocide, lift the siege, ensure unrestricted humanitarian aid, restrain the army or investigate violations of international law? None.
Israeli media have spent the past three years reporting on major disagreements between the government, military establishment, intelligence agencies and political opposition over what should happen in Gaza.
Yet Eisenkot has pledged to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza within 18 months of taking office, whether through US President Donald Trump’s framework or through continued war.
For his part, Yesh Atid leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid has proposed placing Gaza under Egyptian administration for up to 15 years, effectively shifting responsibility for Israel’s actions onto Arab states.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, supports continued Israeli military control until Palestinian groups are disarmed.
The disagreement, therefore, is often over how Israel should achieve its objectives, rather than whether those objectives should change.
Other major disagreements primarily concern Israeli society: the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, judicial reform and accountability for the failures of 7 October.
But these disputes should not be confused with the questions that matter most to Palestinians.
If Netanyahu succeeds in forming another right-wing coalition, the policies of occupation, settlement expansion and military confrontation will continue, potentially with renewed momentum.
If Israel produces a broader coalition, its members may reach compromises over judicial reform, conscription and other domestic disputes. The occupation, however, is unlikely to become the central point of disagreement.
More troubling still, even a government leaning towards the centre-left might succeed in presenting Israel to the international community as a country ready to move beyond the image it acquired during three years of genocide, without fundamentally changing its conduct on the ground.
The international community must therefore remain vigilant. It cannot allow a future Israeli government to present itself as a peacemaker, or sell the illusion of a newly reformed Israel, while continuing to invest in settlements, occupation, war and genocide.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objectingEd Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
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Clashes break out between Israeli settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, and Palestinian farmers harvesting olives in the town of Deir Ibzi, near Ramallah in West Bank, on October 9, 2026. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
The persistent violence from Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank has become such common fare it risks becoming banal. Unfortunately, it takes events such as those befalling veteran photojournalist Heidi Levine of The Washington Post and European diplomats to return the attention to something that is not only grotesque but programmatic.
On 16th October, while covering the annual olive harvest in the West Bank Levine, fellow journalists and a group of Palestinians became the ripe targets of Israeli settlers. The auguries of violence were already present: over the course of 24 days since the season commenced, 125 physical attacks on Palestinian olive harvesters had been reported. After an initial gathering at a hilltop in the proximity of Abu Falah, the numbers of the assailants ominously swelled. They approached the group menacingly, burning olive trees on route. Then came tear gas and shots. A Palestinian was wounded in the leg.
Levine, in her description, was forced to the ground. “They just kept kicking me and hitting me with sticks, and it just kept going on and on. And then I actually thought, okay, maybe I’ll just play dead and pretend I’m dead, and they’ll stop and they’ll leave me alone.” The decision failed to yield the desired result.
Her camera bag, lenses, pouch filled with her US passport, credit cards, documents and relevant items were seized. She was hauled to her feet.
Eventually, a group of Palestinian men intervened to stand “in front of me to protect us, me and my rescuers from being attacked again.” Without that involvement, the group “would have been in the same situation as me.” In that encounter, Levine suffered a broken rib, a broken vertebra and a severe finger injury needing surgery.
In a separate attack on 17th October, French, Belgian and Polish diplomats and dignitaries of the Catholic Church found themselves targets at the mostly Christian village of Taybeh near Ramallah.
The window of a car from the Belgian consulate was smashed. Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, was beaten
The response from the Israeli government was, as to be expected, guarded, qualified and, in the end, light on the egregious conduct of the assailants. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar merely called the attacks on the European officials the cavalier work of “Israeli rioters”, blaming those who had organised the convoy for not coordinating “with the IDF in advance. Such coordination could have helped safeguard the visitors’ security.” Presumably, irresponsible Palestinian olive pickers do not coordinate with the IDF sufficiently to prevent settler attacks they invite upon themselves for simply being there.
An official statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office suggested that “serious questions” remained unanswered regarding the attack on Levine, a neat way of suggesting that non-settler accounts were to be treated as mendacious, self-interested and ultimately, unreliable. “Reports indicate some 200 Arabs and far-left activists confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths.” Those Arabs, those leftists, in a struggle against unblemished Israeli youth. The violence that ensued had a certain equivalence – so the PM’s office seemed to imply. “Footage shows masked individuals on both sides hurling objects, amid reports of fireworks fired at Jewish youths.”
As for Levine, was she to be trusted? After all, “footage appears to show Levine knocked down and immediately helped to her feet by the same unidentified individual.” Not so, rebutted Levine.
The attackers “only stood me up because they couldn’t manage to get everything off my shoulders to rob me, including ripping off my gold necklace that my daughter gave me for my birthday.”
The statement went on to reveal the whole rationale of such parrying responses. “We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.” Hard to be law abiding if one’s entire presence is premised on illegal occupation.
Stung into modest, cosmetic action, the Israeli authorities detained ten suspects regarding the two attacks on 19th October. On 21st October, nine of them were ordered by a Jerusalem court to be released to house arrest. “In the vast majority of attacks against Palestinians, no arrests are made at all,” explained Yonatan Kanonich, head of research at the Israeli rights outfit Yesh Din. “In cases that receive media coverage … the police arrest several settlers and release most of them shortly afterward.” Assaf Gonen of the legal aid organisation Honenu, bluntly claimed that such arrests were only “for show” with the intention of satisfying “media pressure and foreign interests.”
Interest has now shifted to the latest spate of bloodletting, with the 23rd October shooting deaths of two IDF soldiers at a checkpoint in Hebron giving Netanyahu the pretext to dig in, condemn and authorise acts of collective punishment. The IDF describes its avenging operation as “focused and limited to the area from which the terrorists operated”, which suggest that the area in question is likely to be flattened. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is unreserved in justifying the demolition orders against “illegal structures” to “create deterrence and exact a price for the serious attack”.
The PM has an election to win, and the security and military forces have become his electioneering playthings. As for the terrorising settlers, Netanyahu only has warm words of praise. They were “heroic” emissaries of Israel’s broader project of settlement. “You are standing in the breach. You are a role model for the people of Israel, you are role model for the State of Israel. We are going to destroy the terror infrastructures, and we are going to build the settlement infrastructures.”
Levine acknowledges the asymmetrical interest shown for Palestinian residents relative to the tenacious, gluttonous coverage given notable foreign visitors who have suffered injury at the hands of the same assailants. “What hurts me most is I can now really understand what others have gone through, what Palestinian women, children, men have gone through,” she reflected in an 22nd October interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“I’m an American, I work for The Washington Post, my story is getting a lot of attention around the world, everyone wants to talk to me – but I can’t imagine what it’s like for all the victims that have gone through the same ordeal and are living with the threat of this violence on a daily basis.”
The response from Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut to the attack had the good sense to note that the Palestinian “farmers in the grove had no flak jackets and no helmets. They had no major American newspaper behind them. If the settlers will do this to an American journalist on camera, in broad daylight, imagine what Palestinian families face when no one is watching.” Heroic deeds, according to Netanyahu, with more to come.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
Israeli soldiers block the road to prevent Palestinian farmers from reaching their land during the olive harvest on October 17, 2026 in Abu Falah, West Bank. (Photo by Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Getty Images)
“European diplomats got a glimpse of everyday life for Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The Israeli military reportedly ignored repeated distress calls before masked settlers attacked a group of European diplomats with metal bars during a visit to the illegally occupied West Bank this past weekend, sparking international outrage.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that “despite the warnings, security forces were not sent to the area to prevent the attack or intervene as it unfolded.” The outlet noted that “an activist who was in the area following reports of attacks on Palestinian olive pickers sent a report of the settlers’ attack to a phone in the brigade’s operations room used to receive messages from settlement security coordinators. The soldiers in the operations room did not recognize the sender’s number, so they ignored the message and did not relay it to forces in the field.”
In the Saturday attack, settlers targeted diplomats from France, Belgium, and Poland, as well as Catholic representatives. Israeli authorities said Monday that they had arrested 10 suspects as part of an investigation into the incident, but critics expressed doubt that the Israeli government would hold the perpetrators to account given the general pattern of impunity for violent settlers.
“It was clear to me this had to come for Israel to save face,” Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel at the International Crisis Group, wrote in response to the arrests. “They probably will be released shortly.”
The attack on diplomats came a day after Israeli settlers in the West Bank brutally attacked 63-year-old Heidi Levine, a photojournalist with The Washington Post and a US citizen. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuissued a statement casting doubt on Levine’s account and news reports, and said the incident was under investigation.
Netanyahu’s office took a similar line following the Saturday attack on European diplomats, saying in a statement, “The more serious the accusation, the greater the demand for compelling evidence.”
Video of masked Israeli settlers striking European diplomats and elected officials near Taybeh, a Christian village in Palestine. The 78-year-old French mayor Bernard Baudoux was thrown to the ground and beaten with iron bars.
France’s foreign affairs ministry denounced the attacks on diplomats as “acts of terror” and called on Israeli authorities to “arrest the perpetrators of this extremely serious assault and bring them to justice.” Bernard Baudoux, a French mayor who was attacked, said he was “struck with metal bars and kicked before being thrown to the ground.”
“We were finally able to get back to our vehicles,” Baudoux added.
Breaking the Silence, an Israeli anti-occupation group, said in a statement on Sunday that “European diplomats got a glimpse of everyday life for Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The group added that the IDF “will always have a bureaucratic excuse” for not acting to prevent such attacks, “but the real reason is that backing settler terrorists is its policy.”
“This horrifying routine serves a purpose,” the group said. “Through daily terror and economic strangulation, it aims to drive Palestinians off their land. The ultimate goals: ethnic cleansing and annexation.”
The attacks also drew condemnation from lawmakers in the US, where Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman recently blocked legislation aimed at shining light on Israeli abuses in the West Bank.
“I condemn the brutal settler attacks on American photojournalist Heidi Levine, European diplomats, and Palestinian olive harvesters in the West Bank,” US Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. “Prime Minister Netanyahu must act now to stop settler violence, protect civilians, and ensure those responsible are brought to justice. The impunity must end.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
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Israeli forces carrying weapons, raid Nablus city of West Bank, Palestine on April 23, 2026. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
A top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, has placed a hold on a $2.8 billion weapons sale to Israel, The Hill reported on Friday.
Shaheen has voiced frustration that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not addressed concerns raised by Democratic lawmakers over civilian deaths in Gaza, Israeli strikes in Syria, and growing violence against Palestinians by extremist Israeli occupiers in the West Bank.
The proposed weapons package includes 40,000 one-ton bombs. The Biden administration had previously withheld similar munitions due to concerns over their use in Gaza and the resulting civilian casualties.
Palestinian health officials estimate that around 70,000 Palestinians have been killed during the three-year war between Israel and Hamas since October 2023, though the figures do not distinguish between civilians and militants.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, Shaheen can place a hold on major arms sales while the State Department addresses lawmakers’ concerns. Semafor first reported that she imposed the hold in July.
Her House of Representatives counterpart, Rep. Gregory Meeks, also announced Wednesday that he had placed a hold on the sale, citing concerns about whether Netanyahu’s government would use US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law and US law.
Asked by CNN about Meeks’ decision, Shaheen said: “All of us share concern about what Israel is doing … what they’re doing in Gaza, their bombing in places like Syria, and what that means for any peaceful solution in the Middle East.”
“Netanyahu needs to hear from America that we don’t like what he’s doing. We don’t like what’s happening in the West Bank where settler violence is killing Palestinians, sending them out of their homes, disrupting basic infrastructure. And the Netanyahu administration has basically done nothing to address that,” she added.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
