Israel has deported 32 foreign activists who were helping to defend Palestinian farmers from attacks by extremist Israeli settlers during this year's olive harvest season, which has seen a surge in settler violence across the occupied West Bank.
The activists were arrested in an olive grove near the town of Burin, close to Nablus, where they had joined Palestinians to protect them and assist in the harvest.
Israeli forces accused them of violating a military order and of belonging to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees - a Palestinian agricultural development NGO.
Rudy Schulkind, a British national among those deported, told AFP he was detained for 72 hours before being expelled on 19 October.
He described his detention as "brutal and dehumanising", telling The National: "There were bed bugs and an infestation of cockroaches in the prison cell, including cockroaches in one of the meals that we were served."
Reports of Israel's prisons frequently document physical and verbal abuse of detainees, following repeated boasts by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of deliberately worsening prison conditions.
Israeli authorities claimed the activists had illegally entered the West Bank and had "been violent" or refused to leave a declared military zone - allegations Schulkind denied, saying soldiers gave them no opportunity to comply.
Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin described the group as "anarchists who carried out provocations in the Samaria area", using the Israeli term for the northern West Bank.
Their deportation comes amid a sharp rise in violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinians during the olive harvest. According to the Palestinian Authority's Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, there have been at least 158 attacks on Palestinian farmers this season.
Earlier in October, settlers injured 36 Palestinians and a Palestinian AFP photographer while they were harvesting olives, with two victims shot with live ammunition.
In another incident, a settler struck a Palestinian woman on the head in the village of Turmusayya, leaving her hospitalised - an attack captured on video and widely circulated online.
On Thursday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported further assaults on Palestinian olive pickers near Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as army restrictions preventing farmers from accessing their groves in the town of Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron.