Prominent Palestinian activist, Ahed Tamimi, was arrested in her home in the village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah, in the early hours of today, November 6.
Following the 22-year-old’s arrest, right-wing Israeli media allied with occupation forces and Israeli far-right politicians issued violent calls for her to be punished and her home demolished.
According to initial reports, she was arrested for incitement after her phone was hacked. Her house was ransacked during the arrest, and it is alleged that the soldiers threatened to come back and arrest the rest of her family.
Ahed’s father Bassem was arrested over a week ago at the checkpoint between Ramallah and Nabi Saleh while he was returning home from work. The grounds for his arrest and his location are still not known.
Israel’s far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted on Twitter this morning praising the soldiers who carried out the arrest. He accused Ahed of having published a social media post supporting the Nazis, sparking a deluge of hateful calls for her assassination and torture.
Ahed’s mother has denied that her daughter wrote the post she is accused of writing. The soldiers who invaded her home, shared a photo of Ahed as she was taken from her bed, accompanied by deriding comments.
Ahed became well known in 2017 after she was detained for slapping a soldier in a video that went viral. The then 16-year-old said she had hit the soldier after seeing her young cousin shot in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet earlier that day. Ahed was freed in July 2018 after serving eight months in Israeli jail.
Nabi Saleh is a small village of about 600 inhabitants, who have become famous for their peaceful weekly protests against the usurpation of springs on their land by the nearby illegal Halamish settlers.
The protests started in 2010 and were banned by the occupation military in 2016. International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) teams regularly attended and reported from Nabi Saleh protests over the years together with other international and Israeli activists.
Nabi Saleh is to this day a symbol of brave and uncompromising resistance to the occupation and they have paid a heavy price for that. Six of their young men had their lives cut short by the Israeli occupiers including a two-year-old Mohammad Tamimi (picture below) who was killed in June this year by the spray of Israeli soldiers’ bullets, which also injured his father.
What happened this morning in Nabi Saleh is a part of Israel’s brutal campaign against Palestinians, including a genocidal attack on the population of Gaza and the reign of terror across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Since 7 October, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 150 Palestinians, made daily arrests of around 100 people and put the West Bank into a near-total lockdown, severely restricting peoples’ movements.
Resistance in a time of annexation and Covid-19 – an ISM webinar
June 30, 20:00 Ramallah time (EEST)
As the world reels from the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the global struggle for racial equality and justice spreads, Palestine once again finds itself at a pivotal moment in the history of its struggle for freedom and human rights.
Covid-19 has caused severe disruptions around the world, and its effects have been extreme in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. The Israeli Occupation has exacerbated and taken advantage of the global health crisis. In the West Bank, inhumane checkpoints where Palestinians are inhumanely herded have proved major transmission zones for the virus, while illegal settlers increased violent attacks on Palestinians during lockdown. In Gaza, a decade of besiegement that has starved the strip of medical supplies, bombed hospitals, and daily power outages are only some of many problems. All of this has made preparation for the pandemic virtually impossible. Furthermore, the long term issues of overcrowding in refugee camps, water and food shortages, and Israeli bans on importing medical supplies all exacerbate the challenges of social distancing and disease containment. This has led to a rapidly deteriorating situation, termed “A Nightmare Within a Nightmare” by international health experts.
During the current pandemic, the Israeli government is moving to enact the annexation bill – to extend Israeli control across the Jordan Valley and much of the area surrounding the illegal settlements, legalizing their own crimes with self-created laws. Scheduled for July 1st, the annexation of the West Bank will increase violations of Palestinians’ few remaining rights and create new forms of discrimination and apartheid.
Scheduled on the eve of annexation, the International Solidarity Movement will host a webinar and Q&A session, providing a comprehensive overview of the current oppression of the Palestinians and nonviolent resistance to occupation. Our speakers will explore these issues from a legal, journalistic, and political perspective, together with activists on the ground joining us live from Tulkarem, Nabi Saleh and Gaza.
Huwaida Arraf
The webinar will be facilitated by Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American joining us from Detroit. A civil rights attorney and human rights activist, Huwaida has conducted research for the Public International Law and Policy Group and is a former chairperson of the Free Gaza movement, part of a long career as a human rights and international law specialist. She is also one of the founding members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Bassem Tamimi
Joining us from the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank is Bassem Tamimi. Born ten weeks before the 1967 occupation of Palestine by the Israeli Occupation Forces, Bassem Tamimi has spent his entire life as a grassroots activist. His commitment to non-violent resistance has been recognized by the European Union and Amnesty International. His daughter, Ahed Tamimi, was imprisoned for 8 months as a child for slapping an Israeli soldier after her cousin was shot in the head. He mainly works in Nabi Saleh, a village that has become encircled by Israeli military infrastructure and illegal settlements.
Wafa Aludani
A journalist and coordinator of the Foreign Media Unit in Al-Thorayya, Wafa Aludaini will be joining us from Gaza, where her parents fled during the Nakba. As a journalist she has covered the Israeli siege of Gaza for over a decade, as well as Israeli invasions in 2008 and 2015. More recently, she has reported on the Great March of Return which she attended even as the UN found Israeli snipers had intentionally targeted and killed journalists during the protests.
Abdul-Karim Dalbah
Palestinian journalist, field researcher and human rights defender. An ISM coordinator for almost two decades and an educator in nonviolent resistance, Abdul Kareem has been campaigning for human rights and Palestinian emancipation since the 70’s. Abed will be be talking about the upcoming annexation and strategies for international solidarity with Palestine, based on his decades of experience, historical perspective, and current activism
Ahmed Abu Artema
Joining from Gaza is a founder of the Great March of Return, Ahmed Abu Artema. Thousands of Palestinians met his call on Facebook in 2018 to take part in a massive peaceful protest towards the barrier fence surrounding them, to demand freedom and the right of return. Ahmed was born in Rafah and is a refugee from Al Ramla village. He works as an independent journalist and author.
International Solidarity Movement (ISM)
The webinar is hosted by ISM. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the long-entrenched and systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles. Founded in August 2001, ISM aims to support and strengthen Palestinian popular resistance with our activists working alongside Palestinians inside the West Bank and Gaza.
The Webinar will take place at 20:00 Ramallah time, EEST (17:00 GMT). It will consist of updates, news, and examples of how internationals can support Palestinians during these times. It will also feature an Q&A session; if you have a question, either for a specific activist, or in general, you are welcome to send it in, to ismtraining@riseup.net. The entire webinar will be streamed live on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube.
12th June 2018 | Mondoweiss | Nabi Saleh, occupied Palestine
This interview with Bassem Tamimi was recorded on May 4, 2018 in the occupied village of Nabi Saleh, by International Solidarity Movement activists.
His daughter Ahed Tamimi, 17, is serving an eight-month prison sentence for slapping an Israeli soldier on the family’s property on December 15 of last year, after Israeli soldiers shot her cousin in the face.
Bassem reflects on his daughter’s choice:
‘I think more than 300 times they raided inside my house… They took my electronic devices several times. They broke the windows several times. They shot most of my children several times. My son was arrested two times. My wife was arrested five times. I was arrested nine times. I was tortured and be paralyzed for a period of time. My wife was shot in her leg, two years she couldn’t walk. My home is under a demolition order. After all of that somebody asked, why Ahed slapped a soldier? She must slap the soldier. Sometimes I feel there is a triple standard or more than in dealing with the Palestinian issue.’
Also check out Tamimi’s comments on the two-state solution (a project of the Israeli left, and the Israeli left has disappeared) and the heart of the issue: a colonization project. Till the colonization project ends, the Palestinian resistance will not cease. And notice at the beginning when he shows visitors the surveillance balloon over Nabi Saleh.
‘You see that balloon watching us? It’s a camera for watching everything.’
24 October 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
VIDEO from the action:
Dozens of Palestinians and internationals protest at Rami Levy Supermarket near the illegal settlement of Sha´ar Benyamin on October 24th. This direct action aims to highlight the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) Campaign that seeks to promote a boycott of Israeli goods.
Four people, including Bassem Tamimi, the head of the Popular Committee of Nabi Saleh, were arrested by Israeli police today as Palestinians staged a peaceful direct action in an Israeli supermarket near the illegal settlement of Shaar Binyamin, north of Ramallah, calling for a boycott of Israeli goods. Two Palestinians were injured and removed in ambulances. Before he was arrested, Tamimi’s ribs were reportedly broken.
Two of those arrested were international human rights activists. One is an American and the other is from Poland. The American activist was dragged away by four Israeli officers.
Starting at around ten this morning, Palestinians and international activists gathered in the parking lot of Rami Levi supermarket, which is frequented by Israelis from the surrounding illegal settlements. The activists entered the market and walked up and down the aisles, holding Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) placards and waving Palestinian flags.
Demonstrators left the market voluntarily when the Israeli army arrived on the scene. As activists exited the building, about forty police, border police and soldiers were waiting in the parking lot. There, the Israeli authorities attacked the demonstrators and fired sound bombs at them.
Even though the demonstrators remained non-violent, soldiers punched, dragged and choked them. As one Palestinian man was pulled away from the soldiers by other demonstrators, to prevent his arrest, his walking stick was taken away as he lay on the ground – following this, he could not walk without assistance. A sound bomb was thrown just metres from the head of another Palestinian man who was already unconscious following attacks from the authorities.
Bassem Tamimi is the head of the popular committee of Nabi Saleh, a village that has suffered drastically from the creation and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Halamish settlement was created less than 1km away from Nabi Saleh, stealing a great deal of the villages’ land, as well as a spring that provided a vital water source for the village. Tamimi was released from prison in April of this year after spending 13 months in an Israeli prison for being accused of “taking part in illegal gatherings.” He was released on bail in April in order to take care of his elderly mother who had suffered a stroke.
The action today aimed to highlight the BDS campaign (www.bdsmovement.net ), which calls for a boycott of Israeli goods.
The status of the detained demonstrators is currently unknown, they remain held in the police station of the illegal settlement of Shaar Binyamin.
A Paletinian demonstrator gets arrested by Border Policemen during the protest at the Rami Levi SupermarketA demonstrator gets first aid help after being injured by a sound grenade at the protest
Bassem Tamimi from Nabi Saleh testified yesterday as part of the defense’s case in the ongoing trial against him. Tamimi, suspected of protest related charges, was arrested on March last year, and remains in detention since.
Bassem Tamimi photo: ActiveStills
After 11 months in an Israeli jail, Bassem Tamimi, a prominent Palestinian activist from Nabi Saleh, was given a chance to plead his case before the military court in regards to the allegations against him, denying them in full while owning up to his and his village’s struggle against the Occupation and the theft of their lands. Tamimi, who was recognized by the European Union as a human rights defender last year, said, “International law gives us the right to peaceful protest, to demonstrate our refusal of the policies that hurt us, our daily life and the future of our children”.
Tamimi began his testimony by telling of his past experience in Israeli prisons and interrogation rooms. He recounted how he was tortured so badly by the Israeli Shin Bet in 1993 that he suffered a severe Intracranial hemorrhage which left him unconscious for a week and partially paralyzed.
He then continued to explain the reason behind the Nabi Saleh protests, saying “I do not know and do not care if they are permitted by your law, as it was enacted by an authority I do not recognize”. He narrated how the settlers from the nearby Halamish continuously took over lands belonging to his village since the 1970s abetted by the army and how, when villagers tried to prevent the latest attempts to seize their lands, the Israeli army exerted repression tactics against them. “Every time we try to help them work the land, before we reach it, they disperse us using rubber bullets, tear gas and using excessive force. This is what happens every Friday”, he said.
Based on coerced statements extracted unlawfully by the Israeli police from two minors, Tamimi is charged with organizing his village of 500 people in a formation of 11 battalions and assigning them different roles during the demonstrations. When asked of his reply to the charges against him Tamimi answered:
This is ridiculous and makes no sense, how stupid would I be to try and organize a 500 people village in 11 battalions […] If indeed there were such battalions how come the Shin Bet or anyone else did not continue the investigation and arrests after mine was carried out? No one continued to look into this issue to try and dismantle this ‘army’ of mine…True justice would not have me stand here before this court at all, let alone while I am imprisoned and shackled. This case is baseless and made up with the sole goal of putting me behind bars…
On March 24th, 2011, a massive contingent of Israeli Soldiers raided the Tamimi home at around noon, only minutes after he entered the house to prepare for a meeting with a European diplomat. He was arrested and subsequently charged.
The main evidence in Tamimi’s case is the testimony of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub, also from Nabi Saleh, who was taken from his bed at gunpoint on the night of January 23rd. In his interrogation the morning after his arrest, Islam alleged that Bassem and Naji Tamimi organized groups of youth into “brigades”, charged with different responsibilities during the demonstrations: some were allegedly in charge of stone-throwing, others of blocking roads, etc.
During a trial-within-a-trial procedure in Islam’s trial, motioning for his testimony to be ruled inadmissible, it was proven that his interrogation was fundamentally flawed and violated the rights set forth in the Israeli Youth Law in the following ways:
The boy was arrested at gunpoint in the dead of night, during a violent military raid on his house.
Despite being a minor, he was denied sleep in the period between his arrest and questioning, which began the following morning and lasted over 5 hours.
Despite being told he would be allowed to see a lawyer, he was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him.
He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he “must tell of everything that happened.”
Only one of four interrogators who participated in the questioning was a qualified youth interrogator.
The audio-visual recording of another central witness against Tamimi, 15 year-old Mo’atasem Tamimi, proves that he too was questioned in a similarly unlawful manner.
The audio-visual recording of another central witness against Tamimi, 15 year-old Mo’atasem Tamimi, proves that he too was questioned in a similarly unlawful manner and was led to believe that implicating others, may earn him a more lenient treatment. The boy was told, numerous times,
Tell us what happened […] and who in the village incited youto throw stones. […] (shouting) you were incited! You…. you are a young boy, Incited by people. Grownups, we know. It’s the grownups who incite you, right?
Since the beginning of the village’s struggle against settler takeover of their lands in December of 2009, the army has conducted more than 80 protest related arrests. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes approximately 10% of its population.
Tamimi’s arrest corresponds to the systematic arrest of civil protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages Bil’in and Ni’ilin.
In a recent, nearly identical case, the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released on March 2011.
Personal Background Bassem Tamimi is a veteran Palestinian grassroots activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah. He is married to Nariman Tamimi, with whom he fathers four children – Wa’ed (14), Ahed (10), Mohammed (8) and Salam (5).
As a veteran activist, Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date, though he was never convicted of any offense. Tamimi spent roughly three years in administrative detention, with no charges brought against him. Furthermore, his attorney and he were denied access to “secret evidence” brought against him.
In 1993, Tamimi was falsely arrested on suspicion of having murdered an Israeli settler in Beit El – an allegation of which he was cleared of entirely. During his weeks-long interrogation, he was severely tortured by the Israeli Shin Bet in order to draw a coerced confession from him. During his interrogation, and as a result of the torture he underwent, Tamimi collapsed and had to be evacuated to a hospital, where he laid unconscious for seven days. As a result of the wounds caused by torture, Tamimi was partially paralyzed for several months after his release from the hospital.
At the opening of his trial on June 5th, Tamimi pleaded “not guilty” to all charges against him, but proudly owned up to organizing protest in the village. In a defiant speech before the court he said, “I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people.” Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that “Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws […] that are enacted by authorities which I haven’t elected and do not represent me.” (See here for Tamimi’s full statement).
The indictment against Tamimi is based on questionable and coerced confessions of youth from the village. He is charged with’ incitement’, ‘organizing and participating in unauthorized processions’,’ solicitation to stone-throwing’, ‘failure to attend legal summons’, and a scandalous charge of ‘disruption of legal proceedings’, for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.
The transcript of Tamimi’s police interrogation further demonstrates the police and Military Prosecution’s political motivation and disregard for suspects’ rights. During his questioning, Tamimi was accused by his interrogator of “consulting lawyers and foreigners to prepare for his interrogation”, an act that is clearly protected under the right to seek legal counsel.
As one of the organizers of the Nabi Saleh protests and coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Tamimi has been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since demonstrations began in the village, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times, his wife was twice arrested and two of his sons were injured; Wa’ed, 14, was hospitalized for five days when a rubber-coated bullet penetrated his leg and Mohammed, 8, was injured by a tear-gas projectile that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Shortly after demonstrations in the village began, the Israeli Civil Administration served ten demolition orders to structures located in Area C, Tamimi’s house was one of them, despite the fact that part of the house was built in 1965 and the rest in 2005.
