A security source confirmed that police officers and IDF soldiers were called to the scene, where they separated the two groups and arrested three suspects, who were subsequently taken in for police questioning.
The arrests come following a report by The Guardian on Tuesday that a 23-person multinational delegation aiming to meet Palestinians in the West Bank during olive harvest season was banned from entering the territory.
The group, comprising French, Spanish, Luxembourgish, Swiss, Greek, Danish, Irish, and American nationals, planned to attend Progressive International’s Second Ramallah Congress in November, co-hosted with Birzeit University.
The program allows participants to “hear expert testimony, deliberate the economic and legal dimensions of occupation, and prepare a collective roadmap for urgent international action,” according to the congress’s website.
UK parliament member: Decision to ban group’s entry ‘political’
“They made a political decision very clearly based on the fact they didn’t want people to witness what’s been going on in the West Bank, especially ahead of the elections,” said UK parliament member Sam Tarry.
Tarry claimed Israeli authorities stopped and held the group for about nine hours before refusing them entry, without explaining why.
UK Labour Party parliament member Clive Lewis told The Guardian that the group was “detained, taken aside and then interrogated. People were shouted at. We were asked why we were going in, what was happening, why our stories were one way or the other. The bottom line was it was a deeply unpleasant experience.”
Simcha Pasko and Asher Smith contributed to this report.
