The UK Foreign Office says it has raised the detention of a British national in the occupied West Bank with Israeli authorities.<\/p>\n
Finn Joughin, a 22-year-old student activist, was arrested in Umm Al-Kheir on Saturday after he was forcibly detained by Israeli settlers who had advanced on the Palestinian village.<\/p>\n
There has been a surge in attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, which was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.<\/p>\n
All settlements are illegal under international law. Outposts are also illegal under Israeli law, although they are often supported by state services and funding.<\/p>\n
The confrontation on Saturday took place in a town near Hebron that has been recently surrounded by settlers. <\/p>\n
According to other activists who witnessed what happened, Palestinian children were playing football when children from settler families started intervening. They then ran to a house and started to dismantle a fence. <\/p>\n
Footage posted online by both settlers and activists and seen by the BBC appears to show Joughin standing by the fence and trying to protect it using his body as a child pushes against him.<\/p>\n
Settlers removed Joughin forcefully and took the London-based student to an outpost.<\/p>\n
Israeli police said a foreign national was detained by security personnel of a settler community who suspected him of an indecent act against a minor. <\/p>\n
In a later statement on Sunday, they said: “The suspect was transferred to the police for questioning, which included, among other things, taking statements that raised suspicion of an assault against a minor.<\/p>\n
“Following his questioning, the suspect was taken into custody, and the investigation into the incident remains ongoing.”<\/p>\n
However, Joughin’s family told the BBC he was due to be deported from Israel on Monday.<\/p>\n
Activists who were with Joughin at the time deny there was any inappropriate behaviour.<\/p>\n
“In every single instance, it was the settler kids who approached Finn,” fellow activist Matthew, who declined to give his surname, told the BBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK Foreign Office says it has raised the detention of a British national in the occupied West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-755153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}