Ahed Tamimi has accepted a plea deal under which she will serve eight months in prison, during a closed-door hearing but must still be approved by the military court. Under the deal, offered by the military prosecution on 21 March 2018, Ahed Tamimi is expected to plead guilty to four charges, including assault, incitement and two counts of obstructing soldiers. Gaby Lasky, her lawyer, said the sentence would include four months already served and a fine of 5,000 shekels (£1,017).
Since her early years, Ahed Tamimi, 17 years old detained teenager has become an international poster girl in her home village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank where regular Palestinian protests take place against settlement encroachment. In 2012, a widely seen photo of 12-year-old Ahed, then, confronting an Israeli soldier earned her recognition. Another image went viral, in 2015, after she was photographed kicking and biting an Israeli soldier who was choking her brother Mohammed.
Palestinians hail Ahed Tamimi as a hero for kicking a heavily armed soldier who slapped her first and was illegally on her doorstep and in an illegal occupation of her country. On 15 December 2017, Ahed’s confrontation went viral was streamed on Facebook. In the footage, Ahed kicks one soldier and slaps his face, and threatens to punch the other, after they stormed into her house and shot her fifteen-year-old cousin Mohammed Tamimi who was severely wounded by a rubber bullet that entered his brain.
The Tamimis are at the forefront of regular protests, a frequent scene of demonstrations, they assert that a part of the Nabi Saleh’s land was confiscated and given to a nearby Israeli settlement. The enemy’s narrative alleged that the Tamimis had given their consent to Palestinians to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers from their home and that the soldiers were present outside at the time to remove the rioters from the house.
After the shooting, the West Bank village erupted in anger and began throwing stones at the Zionists, who attempted to put a stop to the unrest by patrolling at the site of a home where protesters were gathered. This aroused the anger of Ahed who ran outside her home and confronted two Israeli soldiers demanding that they leave the family property.
The soldiers’ restraint and refusal to act aroused anger among Israelis, as a result, the Zionists prepared a raid on the Tamimi residence, the next morning. In December 2017, the Tamimis woke up with a shock at about 3 a.m. to the noise of the Israeli forces banging on their front door and screaming. Ahed’s father, Bassem, opened the door for the soldiers, who pushed him aside and trooped into the house. At least 30 soldiers raided the house to arrest Ahed, without giving any reasons. They went rifling through the household leaving behind a mess and confiscated the family’s electronic possessing.
Ahed’s father is a prominent Palestinian activist since 2009, who successfully broadcasted the Palestinian peaceful protests in social media. He strongly believes that Ahed’s rights are being infringed and her trial should not take place,’ as the Zionist entity has no respect for international law and acts with impunity because of its ‘power’. He said, ‘There is nothing more provocative than Israel’s occupation [of Palestine]…so the normal reaction is to resist.’
Amnesty International has called for an immediate release of Ahed Tamimi, saying ‘the arrest of a child must be used only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time’. Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and Africa have stressed, ‘As an unarmed girl, Ahed posed no threat during the altercation with the two Israeli soldiers who were heavily armed and wearing protective clothing.’ Besides, Human Rights Watch has emphasised that Ahed’s pre-trial detention is both a violation of international law and unnecessary and that ‘Israel’s military justice system, which detains hundreds of Palestinian children every year, is incapable of respecting children’s rights.
Within the Zionist entity, there are voices demanding to release Ahed. Some of Israel’s critics have said the case epitomises the Zionist brutal approach, half a century after its forces captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticised Israeli’s actions, while the European Union has expressed concern over Israel’s detention of minors, including Ahed Tamimi.
Luisa Morgantini, the former vice president of the European Parliament said that the injustice of the Israeli occupation is so great that one cannot remain silent. Additionally, Alistair Burt, UK Minister of state for the Middle East at the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office, said, ‘The truth is the soldiers shouldn’t have been there and the young woman shouldn’t have needed to do what she did.’
An online petition organised by Ahed’s father calling for her release has gathered 1.7m signatures. Twenty-seven American cultural figures have signed the petition including, Actors Danny Glover and Rosario Dawson, novelist Alice Walker, famed activist Angela Davis and philosopher Cornel West. The petition explicitly relates Tamimi’s fate to the children of immigrants and communities of colour who face police brutality in the United States.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli nongovernmental organisation, a parent has the right to accompany their child during an interrogation in the occupied Palestinian territory. Ahed Tamimi has gone on trial before Ofer military court, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, which has been delayed several times. This postponing of the trial aims at holding Ahed for so long until she is broken down psychologically to the point that she would agree to sign a plea sheet.
On 13 February 2018, she arrived at the military courtroom escorted by Israeli security personnel, in a prison jumpsuit with her hands and feet in shackles. She appeared calm, smiling and flashing the ‘V for victory’ sign at photographers. Her father Bassem Tamimi waved to her from the audience, yelling out ‘stay strong’.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Ahed Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in prison, after the Ofer Military Court approved a plea bargain in which she allegedlyconfessed to ‘aggravated assault of a Zionist soldier, incitement to violence and disrupting soldiers on two other occasions.’
Gaby Lasky, Ahed’s Israeli lawyer, dismissed arguments that the continuous detention would violate Ahed’s rights as a minor and concluded she would pose a danger if released on bail. She said that although Ahed is only 17-years-old, ‘the court believes that her indictment is enough to keep her in detention until the end of the trial’. Lasky said she argued that the trial could not move forward because Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its court system there is illegal.
UN experts expressed concern that Ahed’s place of detention, Hasharon prison, was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that the deportation of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power, or to that of any other country, is prohibited regardless of the motive. They expressed that the case of Ahed violates the fundamental legal guarantee to have access to counsel during interrogation.
