23rd April 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team| Hebron, Occupied Palestine
At approximately 7 am this morning, Rami Rajabi, a six-year-old child, was 20 meters away from checkpoint 29 when he threw several pebbles in al-Khalil (Hebron).
As Rami walked away towards his school, three Israeli soldiers burst out of an alleyway, grabbed his arm, and detained him in the street.
Rami then burst into tears and was clearly terrified, the Israeli soldier tightly gripped his arm and began to pull him back towards checkpoint 29.
ISM activists tried to intervene, trying to convince the soldiers to release the child. The soldiers dragged him back to the checkpoint where local Palestinians implored the soldiers to release the boy.
While ISMers were filming the incident, Israeli Border Patrol watched on as a settler from a nearby illegal settlement to aggressively confront the ISMers, calling one activist a “killer” and tried to grab the camera.
After approximately 20 minutes of pressure from locals and activists, the child was released and was taken home by a friend of his family.
An ISMer present said, “What happened today is part of an ongoing campaign to intimidate the local population: Israeli soldiers harass children here in Hebron all the time”.