If you follow me at all on social media you would’ve seen how incensed I have been lately at the incarceration of a 16 year old Palestinian adolescent, Ahed Tamimi by Israeli forces. The circumstances of Ahed’s arrest are absurd as they are terrifying. What is worse is the deafening silence by mainstream media outlets on her story.
For those of you who are interested in the facts, Ahed is a 16 year old who lives in Nabi Saleh, a village close to Ramallah in the West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territories. Within the past decade this region has seen an increase in seizure of land and forcible removal of its native Palestinian population as construction of illegal Jewish settlements has indiscriminately pushed forward. Ahed, as is the case for many of the children in these villages, has come of age during a time in which her family has been continuously intimidated, belittled, harassed and forced off their ancestral lands.
On the 19th of December 2017, Ahed was arrested and taken into custody to face an Israeli military court; her crime?.. slapping an Israeli soldier. Yes, you read that previous sentence correctly a 16 year old was forcibly detained and faces conviction for slapping a fully grown, heavily armed adult man. The story of her arrest reads like a traumatic kidnapping in which Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers stormed her house at 4am and took her away from the shelter and protection of her family and into custody; over a slap.
To identify the farce involved here seems without question but I will highlight it nonetheless. Ahed is a child… she is 16 years old. The ‘aggressive behaviour’ she displayed which apparently led to her arrest was after an Israeli soldier shot her cousin point blank in the face with a rubber coated metal bullet. Shattering his head on one side of his face and leaving him in a medically induced coma for 3 days. Oh and by the way, her cousin is 14 years old.
The only apparent crime which has been committed here is not actually a crime at all but instead the act of a 16 year defiant Palestinian adolescent seemingly emasculating the might of the Israeli army. According to Defence for Children International (DCI) the numbers of Palestinian children in custody amount to between 500-700 per year. In most cases they are forcibly detained and interrogated without parental supervision or a lawyer present. Their crime you ask? In the vast majority of instances the most common charge is stone throwing.
Ahed Tamimi languishes in prison till today. She has been incarcerated for over 3 weeks and faces a trial in Israel’s military court which has a near 100% conviction rate. During a documentary in which her father was asked why children in Nabi Saleh are so involved in the resistance movement he commented that if this course of action was not taken, their children would have no future to live up to in the first place.
For Ahed herself, a mere child, she explains that if Palestine wasn’t under occupation, she would have been a soccer player… if only.
#freeahedtamimi #endtheoccupation.
End.
I blog for Change. 