Congressional candidate and former City Comptroller Brad Lander on Wednesday said he was briefly detained by the Israel Defense Forces in the occupied West Bank.
In a social media post, Lander said he and a group of rabbis and volunteers were taken into custody while harvesting olives.
Lander previously said he was traveling to the West Bank in solidarity with Palestinian farmers.
“The occupation is a crime under international law,” he wrote. “Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”
In a subsequent post, Lander said the IDF released him with a warning, but added that several others were still in detention.
“These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes,” he wrote. “Yet one more element of escalating, and very clearly state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”
The incident was the latest in an annual olive harvest that has been marked by violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers attempting to gather their crops.
In its own statement, the IDF called the harvest “uncoordinated” and a “security risk.”
“Harvesting in this area requires a request to be submitted to the relevant authorities in advance of the start of the olive harvest season,” the statement said, in part. “This coordination is necessary to ensure the security of the area and maintain public order.”
“It should be emphasized that authorized olive harvests have taken place and continue to take place,” it added.
This year, Palestinians have been required to coordinate with the Israeli military to access more of their privately owned farmland than in previous years. The anti-settlement group Peace Now said last week that the army had expanded by nearly 30% the area of farmland that Palestinians cannot enter without prior approval, to 34 square miles.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the exact figures, but said Palestinian farmers must coordinate access to areas under Israeli security control.
Israeli rights group Yesh Din and the Palestinian Farmers’ Union have said the 2026 harvest has been the most violent in recent history, with hundreds of reported thefts, clashes and arson attacks.
Much of the violence has unfolded on land outside Palestinian villages, where Palestinians have historically harvested olives and Israeli settlers have increasingly erected outposts without authorization from Israel’s government.
But there were no clashes before Israeli forces arrived Wednesday, according to Beck Strober, a spokesperson for Protect the Harvest, the advocacy group that organized the volunteers at the grove.
Jill Jacobs, one of a dozen American rabbis detained, condemned the Israeli government restricting the ability of Palestinians to harvest freely.
“The Israeli government is actively advancing the forced displacement of Palestinian communities across the West Bank, using its military to deny Palestinians access to their land and intimidate those who stand alongside them,” Jacobs, chief executive of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, said in a statement.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for his part, released a statement denouncing Lander’s detainment.
“Harvesting olives is not illegal. The occupation is,” he said, in part.
“I am thankful that Brad has been released,” he added. “But other New Yorkers remain detained, and they must be released immediately.”
Lander, a Democrat, is currently running to replace Rep. Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District.
He defeated Goldman in the Democratic primary earlier this year.