Italian Activists Detained in the West Bank and Released

Alberto Tartarotti and his son Manuel, volunteers from Bolzano, Italy, were detained by Israeli police in the West Bank on Tuesday, October 20, under accusations of terrorism before being expelled from the region. The father and son had arrived in the West Bank on October 18 to collaborate with Youth of Sumud, an organization that received the Alex Langer award in 2024.

Following their arrest, the two activists were interrogated, fingerprinted, subjected to DNA collection, and kept in handcuffs until nightfall. They spent the night in a cell before returning to Italy the following day on an Israeli commercial flight. Both individuals received a ten-year ban from entering Israel.

According to Alberto Tartarotti, authorities detained them due to rumors regarding olive harvesting. "The rumor spread that we were going to harvest olives for the Palestinians, but actually the Palestinians have always harvested olives for themselves," Tartarotti stated in an interview. He explained that international volunteers are present to serve as a shield against settler incursions rather than to pick olives.

Tartarotti also mentioned encountering five Italian female activists who had recently arrived in the village of al-Bweib, south of Hebron, shortly before their own detention. "They obviously do not want to have witnesses, which is why they continue to arrest and then expel activists; we are inconvenient people," Tartarotti added, emphasizing that international attention on the situation in the West Bank remains critically low.

In a separate development in Italy, regional president Francesco Acquaroli addressed recent judicial investigations in the Marche region involving the arrest of his former chief of staff, Fabio Pistarelli. Acquaroli stated that during a three-month extension of Pistarelli's contract, administrative rumors reached him and were immediately forwarded to the regional oversight commission. Although those rumors remained unverified, Acquaroli requested Pistarelli step down.

Meanwhile, political minority groups in the regional council requested an urgent meeting to discuss the ongoing judicial inquiry into post-earthquake reconstruction efforts. Regional coordinator Elena Leonardi of Fratelli d'Italia defended the party's commitment to legality and criticized any political instrumentalization of the ongoing investigation, noting that substantial funds and thousands of private reconstruction sites have been successfully managed under the current administration.