It took two attacks on foreigners, a wave of international anger and a pointed demand from Washington, but on Monday morning Israeli security forces moved. Ten suspects were picked up in a string of dawn raids across the middle of the occupied territory, in an operation the police named “Olive Leaf”, run jointly with the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, the Border Police and the army. Officers also seized cars and tore down unauthorised buildings; settler activists said one of the raided sites was an unauthorised farm outpost near Ofra.
The weekend that triggered the crackdown began on Friday in Abu Falah, where a gang of settlers set upon Heidi Levine, a photographer working for the Washington Post. The assault cost her several ribs and vertebrae, and surgeons had to save a finger that had nearly been severed. A day later, masked men turned on French, Belgian and Polish diplomats who had come to watch the olive harvest in Taybeh, a mostly Christian village.
According to Army Radio, all of those detained are Israeli citizens. Police say they are suspected of violence, of entering a closed military zone and of illegal building. Mike Huckabee, Washington’s envoy to Israel, had pressed for prosecutions and hailed Monday’s swoop as “a very positive development”.
Police chief Danny Levy insisted the law applies “to everyone”, yet he also drew a line between preventing incidents and investigating them afterwards – widely read as a swipe at the army and the Shin Bet. Benjamin Netanyahu, eight days before an election that polls suggest will cost his coalition its majority, sounded less resolute: in his view the diplomats had wandered into a sensitive area without clearing the visit with the army and called the facts of the Levine case unclear. Levine said she felt “shocked and insulted”.
Rights groups note that attacks on Palestinian farmers happen almost daily during the harvest and rarely end in charges. Belgium’s foreign minister Maxime Prévot has vowed that Brussels will hear more calls for sanctions from his government.
