Police claim Brad Lander and 80 other activists didn't coordinate, despite IDF maps showing no coordination needed in area; Israel accuses Lander of 'harvesting headlines'

US photojournalist describes ‘protective shield’, vows to return to work in West Bank and criticises Netanyahu comments on incident

The Washington Post photojournalist who was attacked and seriously injured by Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Friday has described how she was saved with the help of local Palestinians.

Heidi Levine sustained four fractured vertebrae, two broken ribs and four puncture wounds when she was knocked to the ground and repeatedly beaten by a crowd of masked settlers while she and other journalists were covering the olive harvest in the Palestinian village of Abu Falah, north of Ramallah.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

© Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

© Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

The veteran war correspondent earned acclaim for challenging the powerful, but her Mideast reporting drew sharp criticism from some Jewish and pro-Israel viewers

Don't ignore the Palestine issue because "it's complicated." It's un-complicated! Keep up in just a few minutes a day with IAK's curated and accurate Daily Updates.

About 80 US, Israeli and British volunteers held near Nahalin in West Bank and taken to police station

The Israeli military has detained about 80 US, Israeli and British volunteers helping Palestinians harvest olives near Bethlehem, including the New York Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, several rabbis and Israel’s former deputy attorney general.

“I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis and volunteers,” Lander posted from a bus taking him to a police station. “We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nahalin in the West Bank. The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP

© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP

© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP

Mr. Lander, a Democratic congressional nominee from New York, had been helping Palestinian farmers. He said he was released after about three hours, but that other volunteers were still in custody.

© Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Many in Gaza and the West Bank are desperate to avoid more years of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which has made life close to unbearable.

© Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Rights groups say the planned 1.4km route, which ends at compound run by far-right settler group Elad, will displace Palestinians and reshape the cultural landscape

A fifth foreign company has pulled out of a plan to build a cable car from West to East Jerusalem that threatens to involve the seizure of land and property rights from dozens of Palestinian families along its route, but local authorities insist the scheme is proceeding as planned.

The project appeared to have stalled for four years until late September, just weeks before Israel’s 27 October elections, when the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) issued a notice of intent to award a contract without a public tender to ROPES, a cable car engineering consultancy based in South Tyrol, Italy.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images