Tamimi to study int'l law against Israeli human rights violations

Seventeen-year-old Ahed Tamimi who has become a national symbol for Palestinian resistance for thousands of youth said that she will pursue her education studying international law in order to bring Israeli officials to justice.

"When I was 11 years old, they arrested my father and I wasn't able to get into the court or visit him. Since then, I have decided to become a lawyer," she said.

"Then when my uncle was slain and the soldier who shot him was found not guilty, my urge went higher up and I really became determined to hold Israel accountable in international tribunals," she added.

During her eight-month sentence, Tamimi sat for her final high school diploma examination, and celebrated her success along with other imprisoned minors in a small "party in jail with the girls."

She also said that what made her more determined to study law is a course in international law that she took with some of the other inmates. "After the law course we took, I liked it even more and became more convinced."

Tamimi has been detained since Dec. 19, 2017, in a night raid four days after a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier and pushing them away from her house went viral on the internet.

Her mother, Nariman Tamimi, who took the video of her daughter and her cousins slapping the soldier, was also arrested on Dec. 20, 2017, and accused of incitement.

Upon her release last Sunday, Ahed Tamimi said that resistance will continue and that her real happiness would be fulfilled once the remaining female inmates in Israeli jails are freed.

She visited the grave of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and then met with President Mahmoud Abbas.

Tamimi's case drew wide public attention and highlighted Israeli military court system procedures, often described by right groups as discriminatory.

Amnesty International has called for Tamimi's release and accused Israel of "discriminatory treatment of Palestinian children."

Speaking about her slapping the soldier, the young Tamimi said that she was aggravated at the fact that the soldier would not leave their home driveway and stop opening fire against other Palestinian protestors from their home, which lead to injuring her cousin with a bullet in the face.

She said that she had expected to be arrested since that moment "because every Palestinian is subject to arrest." She was arrested in a violent night raid from her home four days after the slapping footage went viral.

Ahed Tamimi became a national symbol for popular resistance, as she has been involved with activists and residents of her hometown village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah in weekly protests against Israeli land confiscation in their village and against settlement expansion.

Several activists from the area were detained and interrogated by Israeli forces as a form of pressure against the families to stop their protests, according to the village head Naji Tamimi.

"The interrogation was very difficult," she said, recalling that "they used psychological pressure against me, they threatened to arrest all my family members if I don't confess, and I didn't have a lawyer or a family member because I'm a minor."

Tamimi said that her reaction to that was to maintain her right to remain silent.

In video footage revealed by her lawyer, Ahed Tamimi was seen silent throughout around one hour of interrogation in December, where the interrogator used verbal harassment and threats against her, without the presence of a lawyer, female officer or either one of her parents, which is a breach of Israeli law.

Palestinians in the West Bank live under the Israeli military law since 1967, and are prosecuted in military courts, including children. Israel employs two legal systems in the West Bank: Palestinians are held accountable under military rules while Israeli settlers living in the same territory are tried on basis of civilian and criminal legal system.

Overall, Defense for Children International office in Palestinian territory says that 500 to 700 children are annually detained, arrested and prosecuted by Israeli military courts. Over 90 percent of the arrest cases are reported of violating law in terms of violent arrest in late night hours, and transferring, interrogating and imprisoning circumstances.

Nariman Tamimi, 42, who was imprisoned with her daughter and received the same sentence after being charged with incitement, due to her documentation of the footage of her daughter slapping an Israeli soldier.

With a tired voice, she explained that the most difficult moment during the eight months is the moment she learnt of the arrest of her eldest son Wa'ad.

"They had come to get him more than once before Ahed's arrest, and I know when they arrest youth from their home, they beat them, so I was very worried of what could happen to him," said the mother.

She was then invited to take a family picture with her husband and children, but insisted to leave one extra seat empty to mark the absence of her son Wa'ad behind Israeli bars.