Israel deports international activists from occupied West Bank
The Israeli authorities are deporting two international activists who were documenting settler violence against Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, in the southern occupied West Bank.
Swedish citizen Susanne Bjork and Irish citizen Deirdre Murphy were arrested on 31 May in the village of Khallet al-Daba, where they had been filming settler attacks against its Palestinian residents.
The two women, who are both UK residents, arrived weeks after the hamlet had been razed by Israeli bulldozers, in what residents described as the “biggest demolition” the village had ever seen.
Shortly after, settlers raided the village, forcing families out of their homes and establishing an illegal outpost on the edge of the community. Since then, the remaining villagers have been subjected to daily settler attacks.
“Women and children were moving out of their houses because of the harassment,” Bjork told Middle East Eye.
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“The settlers come with their sheep and go round the houses terrifying the locals”.
On 30 May, while attempting to document this, Bjork was assaulted by settlers who stole her phone.
“We’d been filming and following them for hours. And then two of them attacked me and robbed me of my phone,” she said. The pair then called the police.
Shortly after, Israeli police arrived along with the military, who Bjork said had likely been contacted by the settlers.
The police took their statement, and instructed the pair to go to the police station in Hebron the next morning.
“Neither the army or the police said that we weren’t allowed to be in the area,” Bjork said.
The two women spent the night at the village. The following morning, at around 6:30am, they were awoken by three masked soldiers banging on the door, instructing them to leave as they were in a “firing zone”.
“They gave us 10 seconds to get out,” Bjork said. The soldiers took their passports and instructed them to gather their belongings and leave the house they were staying in.
The two complied, asking for permission to leave the village so they could report to the police station. The soldiers agreed and handed back their passports.
But as they were trying to leave, they were stopped by a man driving an all-terrain vehicle, claiming to be a soldier. While he was wearing fatigues, he did not have official Israeli forces insignia on his clothing.
“He wouldn’t identify himself, and so we wouldn’t give him our passports, but he wouldn’t let us continue on to leave the firing zone,” Bjork told MEE.
“He wouldn’t let us go back to the soldiers. We didn’t know who he was, so I then again called the police,” she said.
Tourists documenting war crimes
The police arrived and took them to the station where they were detained and interrogated.
“They said that we hadn’t shown ID when asked, that we hadn’t left the area and complied with instructions,” Bjork said.
“We were asking them, ‘What are you doing? These are children.' They said, ‘No, they are terrorists - they run too fast"'
- Susanne Bjork
During their interrogation, two Palestinian boys were brought into the station, handcuffed and zip-tied.
“We were asking them, ‘What are you doing? These are children,’” Bjork said. “They said, ‘No, they are terrorists - they run too fast.’”
Bjork and Murphy were released that night, but instructed to report to Ben Gurion Airport’s immigration authority the next day for a hearing.
At the airport, they were told that if they agreed to leave voluntarily, they would be driven across the border to Jordan, but the pair refused as there would be no official paper trail.
They were then threatened with 72 hours in detention prior to deportation.
“So they’d already made their minds up about the deportation,” Bjork said.
The two were interrogated and told that they had “intimidated and humiliated police and soldiers”.
“The immigration officer said to me, ‘I don’t believe anything you’re saying,’” Bjork told MEE.
Bjork was then told her visa was cancelled, that she was there illegally and was now detained. Bjork opted to get the first flight out, while Murphy continues to be detained in order to contest the order.
“She wanted to stay in detention because we hadn’t done anything wrong. The police report was full of inaccurate information and she wants to highlight the injustice of it all”.
Days after Bjork and Murphy’s arrests, Basel Adra, co-director of No Other Land, an Oscar-winning film about Israel's control of the West Bank, reported that masked soldiers barred international journalists from entering Khallet al-Daba.
“This is just a tactic for the occupation to stop anyone trying to document what’s happening to these communities,” Bjork said.
“We were tourists just documenting war crimes,” she added. “I asked one of the soldiers why they were masked. One of them said ‘If we’re not masked, it’s too difficult for us to travel abroad’. So in effect, they were admitting to committing war crimes.”
A new policy
Khallet al-Daba has had to contend with years of settler violence.
The hamlet is one of 19 Palestinian villages facing demolition in Masafa Yatta, which was designated a “firing zone” for military practice in the 1980s.
In May 2022, despite multiple appeals from residents, the Israeli High Court ruled that Palestinians are not permanent residents, and, in so doing, removed the last legal barriers to their forced transfer.
Israeli forces regularly demolish buildings that the authorities say were illegally built in the area, which is home to over 1,000 Palestinian residents.
Since Israel’s war on Gaza was launched in October 2023, state-backed settler attacks and demolitions have skyrocketed across the occupied West Bank, while illegal settler outposts have proliferated.
The Israeli authorities have also increasingly targeted international activists in the occupied West Bank for deportation in the last 18 months.
In 2024, far-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir created a special task force to “deal with anarchists who harm state security”.
Israeli media reported that the task force was formed in response to US and EU-imposed sanctions against settlers and their illegal outposts.
According to an anonymous security official quoted by the Israeli news site Ynet, the targeted “anarchists” include “foreign nationals who come here from all over the world straight to the territories and create provocations” against Israeli soldiers.
Bjork has been travelling to the occupied West Bank regularly over the past decade, but this is the first time she has faced arrest and deportation.
“We were quite shocked, this seems to be a new policy,” Bjork told MEE. “Before, you would just get a ban from entering the occupied West Bank”.
Murphy and Bjork’s arrests are not isolated cases but part of a broader pattern of deportations targeting foreign activists supporting Palestinians in the West Bank.
According to Haaretz, at least 16 activists have been deported since October 2023 after being detained in the West Bank.
On 12 May Janet Adyeri, another British activist was arrested in at-Tuwani, another Masafer Yatta village
Israeli police said she had entered a “closed military zone” and refused to present her identification. They added that during questioning, “she was found to have posted anti-[Israeli army] sentiments on social media and to belong to an organisation calling for the boycott of Israel”.
But Adyeri said in a statement posted by the Masafer Yatta Solidarity alliance that she had complied with Israeli military orders to present her identification.
Adyeri's lawyer, Riham Nasra, confirmed that she had presented her passport to an Israeli solider, but was arrested after asking to have it back.
She further said that Adyeri had not been questioned about her social media posts during the interrogation.
Adyeri was detained for six days before being deported.
Bjork warned that the arrests of activists and the barring of journalists from the occupied West Bank will reduce scrutiny on the escalating displacement and harassment of Palestinians there.
“The Palestinians are just left to fend for themselves. There really needs to be some international protection for these communities…they are being harassed and attacked every day. And as soon as someone stands in solidarity with them and tries to document it, we are also removed,” Bjork said.
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