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Israel has ordered the deportation of a Jewish American activist who had been volunteering in the occupied West Bank, accusing her of disrupting public order after a car struck a five-year-old Palestinian girl in the South Hebron Hills, according to officials and her attorney.
The activist, whose name was not published, will be expelled via the Sinai border crossing with Egypt because of flight restrictions at Ben Gurion International Airport, which has been operating under severe limitations since the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Iran.
The incident that triggered the deportation order occurred on Friday in the Masafer Yatta area, a cluster of Palestinian hamlets in the southern West Bank. According to the Haaretz report, the activist confronted the driver of a vehicle that had hit the child, leading to a confrontation.
Israeli police said the activist was detained for clashing with the driver and damaging his vehicle, arguing that she had disrupted public order. However, the account provided by the activist herself paints a starkly different picture.
According to Haaretz, the activist said that during her questioning by the Population and Immigration Authority, she was not asked about the confrontation with the driver. Instead, interrogators focused on her social media posts and political views, and the deportation order was issued on that basis.
Israeli officials maintained the decision was justified, claiming the activist had previously been questioned and warned over her activities in the Masafer Yatta area, a region that has become a flashpoint for confrontations between Palestinian communities, Israeli settlers, and international solidarity activists.
The activist's attorney, Alon Sapir, a Tel Aviv-based human rights lawyer whose practice focuses on international human rights and humanitarian law, pushed back forcefully against the government's reasoning. Sapir said his client had not been suspected of any crime during the earlier interrogation cited by authorities and had been released unconditionally at that time.
He accused the Israeli government of systematically deporting activists who oppose its policies in the occupied territories as a way of silencing criticism and nonviolent protest.
"A strong state does not behave this way, and an independent judiciary does not allow it," Sapir said.
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The deportation fits into a broader and accelerating pattern of Israel removing foreign nationals, including Jewish Americans, who engage in solidarity work with Palestinians in the West Bank. Since the beginning of the olive harvest in autumn 2025, 42 international activists were deported, according to evidence presented by Israeli police at a hearing in the Knesset.
In October 2025, an 18-year-old Jewish American woman and another U.S. citizen were deported and banned from Israel for 10 years after participating in olive harvesting with a Rabbis for Human Rights delegation. In January 2026, a Jewish American researcher living as a temporary resident in Israel was denied re-entry at Ben Gurion Airport upon returning from a vacation, classified by authorities as an "anarchist calling for the destruction of Israel."
Masafer Yatta is a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets in the southern West Bank, located between 14 and 24 kilometres south of the city of Hebron. The area has long been at the center of disputes over Israeli military control and settler expansion.
In May 2022, the Israeli Supreme Court endorsed the military's position regarding an area of 3,000 hectares in the region, paving the way for the potential expulsion of around 1,000 Palestinian residents.
The 2024 Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land' brought international attention to the community's struggle.
Because conventional air departure was not available, the activist is being expelled overland to Egypt through the Sinai border crossing, the same route that approximately 15,000 stranded Israelis have used to leave the country since the airspace disruptions began.
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