Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has called for the quick and unconditional release of ​five Italian campaigners, all women, who were among dozens of activists kidnapped by Israeli forces during a mass abduction in the occupied West Bank earlier this week.

According to the Italian foreign ministry, the women were kidnapped on Thursday by Israeli authorities in the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement on the outskirts of al-Khalil, south of the occupied West Bank, alongside other international activists while attempting to safeguard Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season.

“What ‌happened ‌is unacceptable; ​they were ‌not committing any crime,” ‌Tajani told reporters on the sidelines of an international summit in Istanbul.

The top Italian diplomat added ‌he hoped they would be released in a matter of hours.

Israeli authorities informed Italian diplomats that the women were expected to be handed over to Israel’s immigration authority, pending expulsion and repatriation proceedings, according to the sources.

Israeli forces abducted 90 people, including American politician and urban planner Bradford Lander, in the West Bank on Wednesday, as attacks by illegal settlers and the army against Palestinians and their land in the occupied territory have intensified during the olive harvest season that began earlier this month.

Palestinian resistance coalition hails West Bank retaliatory shooting that killed two Israeli soldiers

A coalition of Gaza-based Palestinian resistance groups hails the retaliatory West Bank shooting operation as a direct response to Israel’s ongoing atrocities.

According to Israeli rights group Rabbis for Human Rights, Lander, who is the Democratic Party nominee for New York's 10th congressional district, was accompanying Palestinian farmers harvesting olives near Bethlehem.

They had been supporting the farmers for around two hours when he was kidnapped.

Rabbi Arik Asherman, a longtime Israeli human rights proponent, called the abductions “unprecedented.”

Last week, illegal Israeli settlers carried out two high-profile assaults, including one in which Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was injured, and another that targeted European diplomats.

According to a United Nations report from July, more than 900 Palestinians were injured in settler attacks since the start of the year.

The same report said that 76 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were killed by Israeli forces or settlers, or succumbed to their injuries, since the start of the year.