Thursday 28 March 2024 
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Tamimi, face of
Palestinian defiance

Nada Elia

 

Nada Elia:

 

Ahed Tamimi has been protecting her ancestral land since she was a tender nine years old.

Photos of the 16-year-old in pigtails, sometimes in a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, mostly with a keffiyeh around her shoulders, started circulating a few years ago, as she and the rest of her family held weekly protests against their dispossession.

The extended community of Tamimis have put the small West Bank town of Nabi Saleh on the map, and in 2013 on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, as they steadfastly confront the Israeli military and nearby settlers during weekly demonstrations against the encroaching settlement of Halamish, which is stealing their water, and wants to prevent them from tending their crops.

Ahed's father, Bassem Tamimi, has been imprisoned for his non-violent resistance multiple times and last week Israeli soldiers arrested Ahed herself in a nighttime raid, after video footage emerged of her slapping an Israeli soldier who had shot her 14-year-old cousin Mohammad Fadel, who remains in intensive care.

The next day Ahed's 21-year-old cousin Nour, who also appears in the video footage, was arrested the next morning, as well as Ahed’s mother Nariman, when she showed up to be present for her daughter’s interrogation.

Sadly, the Tamimis' struggle is not unique. Rather, it is typical of that of the millions of Palestinians who have been losing their homes, their land, their natural resources and their livelihood for 70 years, and most of whom engage in non-violent resistance which is met with the full fury of the powerful Israeli military.

Nor is Ahed’s nighttime arrest extraordinary: Israel arrests an average of two children every night, more so since the recent protests that followed US President Donald Trump’s declaration that the US recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

One example, from earlier this month, is that of Abdul-Khalik Burnat, the 17-year-old son of Iyad Burnat, another non-violent protest leader, who was also arrested with two friends, and charged with “damaging” the apartheid wall.

Burnat and his friends are now in Ofer prison and, their equally worthy struggle notwithstanding, their arrest and imprisonment are not making international headlines.

 

(Courtesy: PIC)




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