More Western Activists Are Traveling to Palestine — and Israel Is Deporting Them

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

As settler violence continues to escalate in Palestine, including the killing of activist and documentary filmmaker Awdah Hathaleen by an Israeli settler at the end of July, Western activists who have been watching from afar as Israel commits a genocide in Gaza are increasingly putting their lives at risk in the West Bank to stand in the way of home demolitions and settler invasions.

Eli, 19, was one of those activists. (He asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation by Israeli authorities.) Eli flew from the U.S. into Israel-Palestine on May 30, in hopes of volunteering with the Tent of Nations in the West Bank. He was denied entry after a lengthy interrogation by Israeli intelligence officials. This would have been Eli’s first visit to Israel or Palestine, and as he told Truthout, “I was very careful to take down any pro-Palestine posts I had online and deactivated all of my social media accounts.” Still, “The second I stepped off the plane, there was somebody waiting on the jet bridge. I don’t know if they were waiting specifically for me, but before I even caught [sic] my surroundings, there was someone who pulled me aside and started doing a lot of questioning,” he said.

Eli was held for hours by Israeli officials and asked about his reasons for visiting Israel, with a clear indication that Israeli officials knew of his intent to volunteer in the West Bank. Due to the difficulty of entering and exiting the West Bank, Western activists will often tell Israeli officials they are visiting as Christian pilgrims or to see friends in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Telling an Israeli border official that one intends to visit the West Bank, or even mentioning the word “Palestine,” is a sure way to end up in hours of interrogation or with a complete denial of entry.

What complicates matters is the fact that the U.S. added Israel to its Visa Waiver Program (VWP) in September 2023, permitting Israeli citizens to apply to enter the U.S. through its Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). Israeli citizens are now able to travel to the U.S. visa-free. The VWP is structured to be reciprocal in nature, so Israel’s entry into the VWP was conditional on its compliance with a set of terms outlined by the U.S., which includes allowing U.S. citizens visa-free entry into Israel regardless of national origin, religion, or ethnicity.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbied for Israel’s admission to the VWP, and while it was on the table during the Obama administration, Israel wasn’t added until President Joe Biden was in office. As then-State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said during a briefing in 2014, “The Department of Homeland Security and State remain concerned with the unequal treatment that Palestinian Americans and other Americans of Middle Eastern origin experience at Israel’s border and checkpoints, and reciprocity is the most basic condition of the Visa Waiver Program.”

Tariq Kenney Shaw, a U.S. policy fellow at the Palestinian policy group Al-Shabaka, told Truthout, “Israel controls the borders. Israel controls who can drive on which roads. Israel controls who can come into the country and who can report and what they can say. This is just further evidence of Israel’s total control of the entire territory from the river to the sea.”

Multiple activists who have been visiting and volunteering in Palestine since the early 2000s told Truthout that the border crossings have become increasingly hostile to foreign visitors. Whether it is due to a formal policy from Israel’s Populations and Immigration Authority or an informal change in sentiment, entering and exiting the West Bank is becoming increasingly difficult, to the point that some fear access will soon be closed off entirely. “They [Israel] know that the truth is damning, and the only way to hide it is by preventing the stories from being told,” Shaw added.

Telling an Israeli border official that one intends to visit the West Bank, or even mentioning the word “Palestine,” is a sure way to end up in hours of interrogation or with a complete denial of entry.

And as settler violence continues to escalate in the West Bank, with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calling it “part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land,” Westerners are living and working in solidarity with Palestinians who are facing the demolition of their homes and theft of their land by Israeli settlers. It is also now more important than ever that Westerners are able to enter the West Bank and bear witness to the violence, as one activist said. “We keep inviting Westerners here because Palestinians feel safer when they’re in the villages,” an official at the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being deported, told Truthout.

The ISM official told Truthout that after October 7, they have witnessed a significant increase in interest among Westerners in traveling to the occupied West Bank as protective presence activists. However, Israel has also stepped up its efforts to identify Western activists before they enter the West Bank and deport them.

Dee Murphy, who is from Ireland and has been volunteering in the West Bank since the 2000s, told Truthout that after she was picked up by Israeli forces in Masafer Yatta, she was told she would be deported. During her interrogation, she recounted, “The Israeli officer said to me, ‘So have you ever been involved in actions against Israel, in your country or abroad?’ And I said, ‘I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions. No, I haven’t.’ But he prodded and prodded, and then he said, ‘Oh, really?’ and came in with the file, which has about 11 pages of photos of me in the most compromising situations in relation to BDS [the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement] and direct action.” Murphy was later deported.

The Population and Immigration Authority, which controls Israel’s ports of entry, has deployed artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology to gather evidence of Western activists’ “anti-Israel sentiment,” as activists witnessed firsthand after their initial detention. Activists who were detained at either the airport or one of Israel’s land crossings also told of systematic abuse and harassment by Israeli officials. According to one activist, as soon as the officials learned that they had any affinity for Palestine or the Palestinian cause, “They treated us like we were less than human.”

Eli was forced to sleep on the floor of the airport as Israeli officials decided whether to allow him entry. “An officer came up to me and was like, ‘You’re not allowed to lie down like that and sleep here. You’re making us all look bad,’” Eli told Truthout. Sophie, an American who is identified by a pseudonym for fear of retaliation by Israeli authorities, recounted to Truthout how she was pulled aside for a “security screening” while exiting the country.

She believes her file in the system was somehow flagged to note that she had been volunteering in the West Bank, as during the screening, “She [the officer] put her hands in my underwear and proceeded to cavity search me, and then after that, she put her hands up my shirt and up my sports bra. And at the same time, the male IDF soldier was standing right next to her.”

Whether it is identifying activists before they arrive, detaining them in the West Bank, or abusing them at border crossings, Israel is doing all it can to stop Western activists in the West Bank from doing their solidarity work.