Israel Arrested 10 Settlers After Washington Pressed It. Within Days, Nine Were Free. On Thursday Alone, It Arrested 36 Palestinians.
Nine of ten settler suspects in attacks on a Washington Post photographer and European diplomats are under house arrest, while the West Bank heads into a full lockdown days before Israel’s election.
By Mike Dean,
By Daily Rumble | October 23, 2026
An Israeli court in Jerusalem ordered nine of ten settler suspects released to house arrest late Wednesday, according to Honenu, the right-wing law firm that represents settlers, as reported by Reuters. Israeli police confirmed that only one suspect remains in custody. The ten had been detained after masked settlers were filmed assaulting Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, who needed surgery on a finger, and after settlers attacked French, Belgian and Polish diplomats and a French mayor the next day. Washington had publicly called for arrests. Within days of making them, Israel was undoing them.
Huge Announcement Just Dropped at DRN
On Thursday, Israeli forces arrested 36 Palestinians across the West Bank, according to Al Jazeera, which cited the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and local sources.
Step back and look at the sequence. Police detain ten suspects at dawn on a Monday, after the United States, France, Belgium and Poland demand action. By Wednesday night, nine are home. The next morning, soldiers are sweeping Palestinian villages and Israel’s prime minister is ordering a lockdown of an entire territory.
That forces a question. When a government makes arrests only under foreign pressure and lets most of them dissolve once the cameras move on, was the arrest ever meant to stop the violence, or only to quiet the diplomats?
Ten arrests, nine releases
Police detained the ten suspects at dawn on Monday across several sites in the central West Bank, the Times of Israel reported. Two were suspected in the attack on the diplomats, four in the attack on Levine, and four of breaking into a home and violating a closed military zone.
The court’s reasoning has surfaced only in pieces. In the hearing over the Levine assault, Judge Moriah Tzarka said, according to Ynet, “there is no dispute that the assault incident is serious.” She then said that a single video shown to her suggested journalists fled because of stone throwing, and noted that the suspects deny any connection to the incident. Ynet reported that three suspects went to house arrest and a fourth was released without restrictive conditions.
The last man held is Nadav Cohen Tzemach. The Times of Israel describes him as an army reservist with a documented history of violence against Palestinians who has never been charged. In December 2025, it reported, he ran over a Palestinian with an ATV and fired a weapon in a Palestinian village. He was put under house arrest for a few days and never charged.
The pattern Yesh Din predicted
None of this surprised the people who track it. Yonatan Kanonich, head of research at the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, told Reuters that in cases that get media coverage, police arrest several settlers and usually release most of them soon after. He told Al Jazeera that “in the vast majority of attacks against Palestinians, no arrests are made at all.”
The scale is the point. Yesh Din has reported 125 physical attacks on Palestinian olive harvesters in the 24 days since the season began. The Palestinian commission that monitors settlement and the separation wall counted 409 attacks in October, 317 by settlers and 92 by Israeli forces. The Palestinian Authority says settlers have killed at least 30 Palestinians since the start of the year. Against those numbers, ten arrests and one man still in a cell is a gesture.
What’s actually happening beneath the surface
Watch who gets treated as the threat. On Wednesday, Israeli forces detained about 80 volunteers helping Palestinian farmers pick olives near Nahalin, outside Bethlehem, according to Rabbis for Human Rights. Among them was Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th Congressional District, who was released with a warning. The soldiers declared a closed military zone. The pickers, the rabbis said, had no way of knowing.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the harvest a “calculated political provocation” and wrote on X: “This was not about harvesting olives. It was about harvesting headlines.” An organizer with the Protect the Harvest coalition said it was the first time the Palestinian family had been able to reach its land since October 7, 2023. Somewhere in that field stood a family that had waited three years to pick its own trees.
Then came Friday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a full lockdown of the West Bank after Israeli forces said they killed two Palestinian gunmen who attacked a reserve battalion near Hebron, with at least five soldiers wounded. That attack is real and the casualties are real. But the lockdown falls on a whole population that did not fire a shot, in the middle of a harvest, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir used the moment to call for Israel to take full control of the West Bank and dismantle the Palestinian Authority. “We have to act before it’s too late,” he said.
Collective restriction for Palestinians, house arrest for settlers accused of beating a journalist. The two standards are visible in a single week.
What to watch
Israel votes on Tuesday. Watch whether the police appeal any of the releases, since they said they would seek to suspend the earlier ones. Watch whether Tzemach is charged with anything this time. Watch whether Washington, which demanded arrests, says a word about their collapse. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has already called the situation “out of control.”
An arrest that evaporates in 72 hours teaches settlers one thing and Palestinians another. Settlers learn that foreign outrage is a news cycle. Palestinians learn that protection is not coming, whatever the diplomats say. A government that wanted the violence to stop would charge people. Ask yourself which one this is.
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Sources:
Reuters via Yahoo News — Israel frees from custody almost all suspects in two settler attacks, puts them under house arrest — https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/israel-frees-custody-almost-suspects-125923510.html
Al Jazeera — Israel frees suspects in two settler attacks as West Bank pogroms intensify — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/22/israel-frees-suspects-in-two-settler-attacks-as-west-bank-pogroms-intensify
Al Jazeera — Israel preparing full lockdown of occupied West Bank after Hebron gunfight — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/23/israel-arrests-36-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-attacks-on-farmers-ramp-up
Al Jazeera — US congressional candidate Brad Lander freed after West Bank detention — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/us-congressional-candidate-brad-lander-freed-after-west-bank-detention
Times of Israel — Detention extended of suspect in weekend settler attacks with known history of violence — https://www.timesofisrael.com/detention-extended-of-suspect-in-weekend-settler-attacks-with-known-history-of-violence/
Ynet — 3 suspects in assault on American photographer released to house arrest — https://www.ynetnews.com/article/o1q5dwi18