Israel deports the foreign activists who are helping protect Palestinian communities from settler attacks
Israeli soldiers confront Palestinian activists during a protest against the Israeli military drill, in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, in the West Bank on 22 June 2022
C. Frances reports in Mondoweiss on 29 July 2026:
When the sun rises over Masafer Yatta in the West Bank’s Hebron Hills, orange light falls across the horizon, the shepherds bring out their flocks, and the struggle for survival begins anew. On March 15th, that struggle manifested in the form of a speeding car, a wounded child, and several international volunteers who were very, very far from home.
It was early in the morning when Elijah, an American activist who asked to only be identified by his first name out of fear of retaliation by the Israeli state, realized that Siwar Hathaleen, a five year old Palestinian girl had been run over by a settler. “She was lying on the ground, and she was bleeding from her head,” Elijah recalled. “She was yelling, and the settler got out of his car and was approaching her and had a big assault rifle strapped to his front.”
In the moments that followed the crash, bystander videos show how a crowd rapidly began to grow at the scene of the collision, as Israeli police, military, and EMS workers began to respond. In publicly available footage, the settler that hit the child can be seen asking the police to arrest the activists and “kick them out of the country.”
“They were like, deport these guys, and were pointing out the three of us,” Eli recalled of the incident. While Siwar Hathaleen would survive the collision, Eli and the other activists were arrested just moments later under suspicion of committing property damage, owing to the settlers claims that his vehicle was harmed. “He wasn’t lying that his car was damaged,” Eli recalled. “Because that’s what happened when you hit a small body with your car.”