JERUSALEM — Israeli police said Monday they had arrested 10 suspects in the occupied West Bank after masked settlers attacked an American photojournalist and European diplomats last week, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported.
The unnamed suspects were detained at several locations on suspicion of acts of violence, violating a closed military zone order and illegal construction, police said, and potential evidence and vehicles were seized. Israel’s Army Radio said all of them were Israeli citizens.
On Friday, settlers beat Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine as she covered an olive harvest in the village of Abu Falah. She suffered four broken vertebrae, a broken rib and lacerations, and needed surgery on a finger, the BBC reported. A day later, settlers confronted a delegation of Belgian, French, Polish and Catholic Church envoys in nearby Taybeh, where French mayor Bernard Baudoux was assaulted.
U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee called the arrests “a very positive development in finding & punishing those who severely attacked and beat” Levine. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, described the incidents as “alleged” attacks amid what it called a “co-ordinated campaign to smear Israel.”
Speaking from her hospital bed, Levine told the BBC that Netanyahu’s response was “a big slap on my face” and that he should have sent a “clear message” telling settlers to end their attacks. Netanyahu’s coalition is projected to lose its governing majority in the Oct. 27 election, as Al Jazeera reported.
The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said it logged 269 incidents of violence tied to the olive harvest over the previous 20 days. Between 2005 and 2025, more than 93% of Israeli police investigations into ideologically motivated offenses by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank ended without an indictment, according to the group.
Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera
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