I’m a journalist. Israel detained me for documenting the olive harvest in the West Bank.

Being detained by the Zionist state was never outside the realm of possibility. As a journalist reporting from Palestine, I considered it as likely as it was foreseeable, and for years I had been making an effort to ensure that, when it happened, I would be prepared. Above all, I wanted to put as few Palestinians as possible at risk. I have been reporting from Palestine for almost 10 years. The first time I went, in 2017, the fear of being denied entry led me to delete every Palestinian contact from my phone, every possible connection to Palestine from my social media accounts, and every note in my notebooks. It was a waste of time. When I landed at the airport, when I went through security on my way back, and at every checkpoint in the West Bank, I was asked no more than a couple of questions. In the years that followed, I published journalistic reports and opinion pieces, nurtured friendships, and gave press interviews. It was no longer possible, even if I had wanted to, to hide my solidarity with the Palestinian people’s resistance to the Zionist colonial project. Anyone could find it simply by typing my name into an online search engine. Even so, every time I traveled, I continued to enter and leave without being asked many questions. But over the past few years, everything has escalated, not only in Gaza, with the intensification of the genocide, but also in the West Bank: settler attacks, the expansion of settlements, the militarization of the colony, checkpoints at village entrances, killings, administrative detentions, torture in prisons. The deportation strategy targeting international visitors in the territory has also escalated. Over the past three years in particular, dozens upon dozens of volunteers and journalists from other countries have been detained by the Zionist military and deported from Palestine. Last week, it was my turn. The morning began early on Thursday, October 8. Together with four other Portuguese companions, I left Ramallah at 6:00 a.m. for the village of Rantis, trying to avoid the many checkpoints being arbitrarily set up to close roads throughout the West Bank. It took us almost two hours to cover 25 miles (40 kilometers), crossing two military checkpoints along the way. When we arrived at our meeting point, a group of 23 people — mostly Palestinians, along with some anti-Zionist Israelis (or Hebrew speakers, as some identify themselves in a deliberate rejection of the Israeli identity) — made their way to an olive grove with around 700 olive trees, according to one of the family members who had planted them. The grove was so close to one of the settlements that, since 2023, the family had been unable to harvest their olives. Whenever they tried, they were attacked by soldiers or settlers. This time, things were different. Throughout the morning, we picked many pounds of olives from dozens of trees. Although we felt the need to look toward the top of the hill every few minutes to make sure no settlers or soldiers were coming our way, there was no sign of danger for more than four hours. That alone was surprising. Of the roughly 10 days I spent harvesting olives last year , there was only one when our group was not attacked by settlers or soldiers. According to the United Nations, between October 1st and November 10th last year, there were more than 160 attacks from settlers in almost 100 towns and villages. More than 150 Palestinians were injured. Everything changed at 12:35 p.m. I wrote in my notebook: “A drone is now hovering over our heads. People stop for a moment and look up, but they quickly go back to picking olives.” My experience harvesting olives in 2025 had taught me what would happen next: about half an hour later, an army vehicle arrived near where we were picking. A little while later, three soldiers wearing balaclavas or scarves approached us and informed us that we could not be there. The Palestinian owner of the olive grove refused to leave — it was his grove. The soldiers backed away and stood further away, holding their phones as though they were waiting for orders from their superiors. At 2:03 p.m., I wrote my final note: “Another army vehicle arrives.” What happened next unfolded in an instant. Six soldiers carrying weapons, with their faces covered, approached the group in an intimidating manner, forcing everyone to leave. There was no resistance whatsoever. Everyone decided to leave the olive grove and head toward the center of the village. It was a long walk, perhaps a mile and a quarter along a dirt road. The soldiers escorted us from their military vehicles until they decided to get out and run toward one of our Portuguese companions, Fred. He had been documenting the Zionist soldiers’ actions on his phone, as almost everyone else had (some of the footage he recorded in the preceding weeks can be seen on the Estórias da Palestina Instagram page). Fred was immediately singled out and detained, without any formal explanation. “All of you are a danger to my… friends. So take a step back,” said one of the female soldiers, who later introduced herself as Dana. She was 23 years old. She was the oldest person in the entire group. It took dozens of questions before we were finally given a reason for the detention: “This is a military area,” she eventually replied. We asked for documentation proving that the area had officially been designated a military zone and that our presence there had been prohibited. Nothing. But it is hardly relevant whether soldiers produce evidence: arriving at a place where Palestinians are harvesting olives and declaring it a closed military zone on the spot is entirely routine in the West Bank. I have seen it happen more than a dozen times. It is perhaps the military tactic most commonly used to restrict Palestinians’ access to their own land. I continued doing my job: documenting. Then, when another military vehicle arrived, the soldiers decided they wanted to detain me, too. I showed them my press credentials and explained that I was working, but none of that mattered. I was taken to Fred, handcuffed, and we were both put inside a military vehicle. We were detained for over two days, moving between a military base, a police station, and a prison used to hold immigrants, before being deported to Portugal on Saturday. Rather than describe the conditions of our detention — which were, from the outset, incomparable to the brutality endured by Palestinians in prison — I believe what matters now is reflecting on why we, and so many other international visitors in recent years, were detained. One might think the reason for my detention was simply that I had been found in what the military claimed was a closed military zone, the first justification given back in Rantis. One might think it was actually related to my alleged “support for and promotion of support for terrorist organizations,” the accusation leveled against me when I was interrogated for several hours by an investigator of the Zionist state. Or perhaps it had to do with the journalism I had done and the opinions I had published over the years. During the interrogation, I was shown a dossier dated late 2025, containing dozens upon dozens of screenshots collected since October 2023. They included quotations from articles I had written, interviews I had given, descriptions of my work, and many, many posts from my personal Instagram account. But none of these is the reason for our detention. These are merely narratives the Zionist state invents to try to legitimize detention, imprisonment, and deportation. The reason is much simpler: the Zionist state detained us in an attempt to prevent international observers from witnessing and reporting on the ethnic cleansing project underway in the West Bank, so that it can continue carrying out the genocide of the Palestinian people in the shadows. It is entirely possible that this text, like the ones I have published before, is being read by the Zionist colony. We are not afraid of you. On the contrary, these detentions make one thing clear: the colonial regime that has occupied Palestine for more than 100 years is very much afraid of people who travel to Palestine to do just one thing — stand alongside the Palestinian people, picking olives, accompanying shepherds as they take their goats and sheep out to graze, staying awake through the night to keep watch over settlers, holding up phones and cameras to document daily attacks, and, above all, returning home to tell the world what they witnessed. The fact that the Zionist state feels compelled to devote so many resources to this strategy says a great deal about its weakness and about the importance of having people on the ground who have the privilege of holding European passports and having the skin color conventionally referred to as white. So there is only one response: return, return, and return again. Let the detention of two people lead to dozens more traveling to the West Bank. The olive harvest campaign has only just begun.