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Palestinian protest icon walks free

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NABI SALEH: A Palestinian teenager released by Israel on Sunday after completing a prison term for kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier urged continued struggle against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a call echoed by the Palestinian president.


Ahed Tamimi, 17, became a heroine to Palestinians after the incident last December outside her home in Nabi Saleh, a village which has campaigned for years against land seizures by Israel, leading to confrontations with the Israeli military and Jewish settlers.


Israelis regarded the incident, which Tamimi’s mother relayed live on Facebook, as a staged provocation.


Tamimi, who was 16 at the time of her detention, faced 12 charges, including aggravated assault.


In March, she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge sheet that included assault and was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment, dating back to her arrest in December.


Wearing her trademark black-and-white chequered Arab scarf, Tamimi greeted dozens of well-wishers in brief remarks outside the home of a Nabi Saleh villager killed by Israeli forces.


“From this martyr’s house, I say: resistance is continuing until the occupation is removed,” she told reporters. “All the female prisoners in jail are strong, and I thank everyone who stood by me while I was in prison.”


Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a statement published by the official news agency Wafa after he met Tamimi and her mother, described the teenager as “a model of peaceful civil resistance..., proving to the world that our Palestinian people will stand firm and constant on their land, no matter what the sacrifice”.


Tamimi’s case drew global attention and Amnesty International said after her conviction that her sentence was at odds with international law.


Amnesty said that imprisonment of a minor must be used only as a last resort for the shortest appropriate period of time.


Earlier, Israeli Prison Service spokesman Assaf Librati said Tamimi and her mother Nariman, who was also jailed over the incident, had been released and were being taken to the West Bank.


Images shared in Palestinian media showed a teary-eyed Tamimi, with her thick mane of strawberry-blonde curls, embracing her mother after being released.


The teenager has been touted by Palestinians as a symbol of resistance to Israel’s military occupation while many Israelis accuse her of being an agitator seeking to provoke soldiers on camera.


Her case sparked an outpouring of international criticism against Israel and a renewed focus on the treatment of Palestinian youths in Israeli military courts.


In a December 2017 video that quickly went viral, the then-16-year-old Tamimi is seen slapping and kicking soldiers in the driveway of her home. She was arrested shortly after and accepted an eight-month plea bargain in March.


She was released early for administrative reasons at the discretion of the Israel Prison Service.


“I have been longing for this moment because I missed them a lot,” Tamimi’s father, Bassem, said last Thursday.


Bassem said that his family is seeking “to continue normal life” and has stopped the weekly anti-occupation protests in Nabi Saleh where confrontations with Israeli soldiers are common.


However, he added, sometimes “the occupation forces you to resist because there is no other way.”


He said his daughter is considering what university to attend and plans to study law.


Israeli police arrested two Italian artists and their Palestinian colleague who were attempting to paint a mural of Tamimi on a section of wall that separates the West Bank from Israel on Saturday, an Israeli police spokesman confirmed on Sunday. — Agencies


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