JERUSALEM /ISTANBUL

Israel decided on Tuesday to deport two Swedish and Irish tourists due to their solidarity with Palestinians, police said.

The two tourists were detained over the weekend for “entering a military training zone” near the illegal settlement of Avigayil in Hebron in the southern West Bank, the police said in a statement.

It called one of the detained tourists “an anti-Israel activist abroad.”

Police said the two women were banned from the occupied West Bank for 15 days and that a decision was issued to deport them.

“One of them agreed to the decision, while the other plans to file a petition,” it added.

In recent months, Israel has decided to bar the entry of numerous tourists and politicians, including parliamentarians from several countries, over their opposition to the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, illegal settler violence, and army incursions into Palestinian areas of the occupied West Bank.

Tension has escalated across the Palestinian lands due to Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, where more than 54,500 people have been killed, mostly women and children, since October 2023.

At least 973 Palestinians have also been killed and more than 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers across the occupied West Bank during the same period.