The incident on Wednesday in which the IDF detained a US congressional nominee and around 90 foreign volunteers, including senior members of Rabbis for Human Rights, while they tried to assist Palestinians in harvesting olives in the West Bank, was a highly complex situation, IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Those activists were seeking to assist Palestinians to accomplish their olive harvest given extensive recent reports of Jewish extremists harassing Palestinians and preventing them from completing their harvests.
Claims from both sides involved, when examined more carefully, show that the IDF was far from at its best, but also was likely not as deeply wrong as portrayed by those detained.
One issue which remains unclear is what the status of the communications between the sides was before the incident.
Rabbis for Human Rights initially said that they had sent letters requesting to coordinate their visit with the IDF Chief's office, with the IDF Central Commander, to the IDF Head of COGAT, to the Samaria Brigade Commander, and to the Etzion Brigade Commander, but had received no response.
Letter requesting to coordinate visit seen by 'Post'
The IDF and the Foreign Ministry initially said that the group had failed to coordinate its visit to the West Bank area and said that the area was a prohibited zone.
However, as of Thursday night, the Post received a copy of the letter that Rabbis for Human Rights sent to the IDF.
The letter is undated, but the organization said that they sent it to the IDF on August 25, nearly two months in advance of the visit.
At press time, the IDF had not clarified whether it had received the letter or not.
Yet earlier Thursday, IDF sources expressed that they were not aware of such a letter.
Further, they indicated that the IDF receives many letters and sometimes may not see or respond to all of them within a short amount of time.
Yet, if the NGO sent such a letter to the IDF, and the military simply did not read it in time because of being overwhelmed with paperwork, this would remove one of the IDF's main justifications for its detention of the activists seeking to assist the Palestinian olive harvesters.
There is another complex series of arguments regarding the incident.
Rabbis for Human Rights said that the area they visited was in Palestinian areas, and as such did not require coordination with the IDF.
Faced with this claim, the IDF did a partial retreat and partially held its ground.
IDF sources told the Post that 90% of the area where the olive harvesters visited was open and did not require coordination with the military, but 10% did require such coordination.
Regarding the visit, IDF sources also said that a large part of the problem which prevented a slower and more careful assessment of the situation was the very large number of visitors and the fact that the visit came as close as around 50 meters to a Jewish village known to have provocative and aggressive members.
In other words, when the IDF arrived in the area about two hours after the olive harvest started, they were seriously concerned that even if the Rabbis for Human Rights group would keep the peace, the extremists from the nearby Jewish village would attack them, given the size of the visiting group.
Of course, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Palestinians harvesters could respond that it is the IDF's job to protect them and allow them to do their harvesting and not to force the to be evacuated, let alone detained, to avoid provoking extremists into breaking the law.
IDF sources do not have a great answer to that question, saying that the soldiers on the ground did not know that US Congressional candidate Brad Lander (D-NY) was present or understand much about the group when they arrived.
Rather, IDF sources say that there have been a series of provocative incidents from Palestinians, Jews, and foreign visitors, and since there was no registered coordination, they just assumed the visitors were provocateurs and that they needed to detain them and get them away from the nearby potential Jewish provocateurs to avoid a potentially large-scale and deadly incident, which also has occurred recently.
Later, when the IDF officials realized who Lander was, they said they immediately freed him.
Further, they said that they freed nearly all of the detainees within a relatively short time, in a matter of hours.
While the IDF's narrative of the incident is not all that favorable, IDF sources said that the broader olive harvesting situation is very favorable.
They said that 22,500 tons of olives and 5,600 tons of olive oil have been harvested or packaged, worth around NIS 225 million.
Further, they said that a huge area of Palestinian West Bank olive harvesting had been properly coordinated with the IDF in the last week and a half.
The IDF said that over 100 olive harvest trips had been coordinated with the IDF without any problems.
The Foreign Ministry said that one quarter of the entire area had already been harvested.
However, the letter of Rabbis for Human Rights to the IDF notes data that there had been a 63% increase in anti-Palestinian Jewish crimes during the first half of 2026 and that the IDF had not allowed harvesting in the specific area in question.
Lander was specifically released with a warning, he noted in a statement.
"I’ve been released from IDF custody with a 'warning,' apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congress member yet, just a nominee)," he wrote.
"But several dozen rabbis & participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention. For harvesting olives. They should all be released immediately," he said, adding that "Palestinians face far worse consequences every day."
Rabbis for Human Rights activists detained in West Bank
Rabbis for Human Rights said the volunteers worked in the village of Nahalin near Bethlehem, accompanying Palestinian farmers to groves during the olive harvest
Leadership from Rabbis for Human Rights said that their work in the West Bank was peaceful, and that it was the organization's policy to comply with IDF orders.
"We came to accompany farmers to land they had been unable to access for three years, and after two hours of peaceful olive harvesting, large numbers of troops arrived and closed off the area. No one could have known about this order in advance. Instead of protecting people working their land, the army is keeping them away from it and detaining those who came to accompany them for identification,” acting executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights Anton Goodman said.
“The fact that Israeli and American rabbis are compelled to stand alongside Palestinian farmers to help them harvest their olives and protect them from settler violence is a damning indictment of the Israeli government. The fact that these same rabbis are detained by security forces, rather than the authorities protecting the farmers and taking action against those perpetrating the violence, is nothing short of a disgrace," said Dr. Yizhar Hess, Vice Chairman of the World Zionist Organization.
Meanwhile, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry viewed the entire incident as planned and designed to be more of a public relations incident than it was focused on helping with the olive harvest, which they say is generally proceeding well, despite some of the other trends of increased Jewish extremist violence.
Corinne Baum contributed to this report.