US military veteran arrested by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank
A United States military veteran was arrested by Israeli forces while accompanying a Palestinian farmer in a village in the West Bank, according to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Michael Jacobsen was in the Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta in the Hebron governorate when he and other activists as well as Palestinian land owners were approached by Israeli soldiers on Thursday morning.
The ISM said the farmer Jacobsen was accompanying was facing "daily harassment, attacks, and invasions of his private land by Israeli settlers and occupation forces".
The soldiers demanded their identification and later Israeli police were called, who arrested Jacobsen and took him into custody at an interrogation centre.
"This interrogation center is home to the special task force created by the notorious Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The task force was created as a response to some states, including the US, sanctioning violent settlers," the Palestinian-led ISM said in a statement shared with Middle East Eye.
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"Since international activists were reporting settler violence that they witnessed to their governments, an Israeli governmental committee was created in March 2024 for the purpose of getting rid of the activists," the ISM said.
Police told the US citizen's lawyer that Jacobsen was “endangering the public due to provocation of disturbances” and accused him of entering the country illegally because they suspected him of supporting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement.
He was threatened with "imprisonment and deportation if he did not leave the country immediately", according to the ISM, and he chose instead to leave for Jordan.
Middle East Eye reached out to the State Department for comment but didn't receive a response by the time of publication.
The news of Jacobsen's arrest in the occupied West Bank comes as Israeli forces have on multiple occasions targeted American and other international activists in the area who assist Palestinians in protesting against Israeli settler encroachment.
Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has soared since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza last October.
In June, the United Nations reported that Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers have killed more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began.
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, said in a report that the cases of these killings showed "consistent violations of international human rights law on the use of force by the ISF (Israeli security forces) through unnecessary and disproportionate use of lethal force and an increase in apparently planned targeted killings".
In August, Israeli forces shot American citizen Amado Sison* in the leg while he was at a demonstration held in Beita, a Palestinian village near the occupied West Bank town of Nablus.
Then, nearly one month later in September, Turkish and American national Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces in a demonstration in the same village of Beita.
Eygi was the third member of the ISM, which was founded in 2001 to support Palestinians in the occupied territories through nonviolent protest, to have been killed by Israeli forces.
On 16 March 2003, American activist Rachel Corrie was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, and a few months later Israeli forces shot dead Tom Hurndall in Gaza in January 2004.
* A pseudonym used to protect the victim's identity
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