An Israeli military court, on Wednesday, ordered 16-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed al-Tamimi to remain in custody indefinitely, until she faces trial for a number of charges relating to a video of her slapping and kicking an Israeli soldier.
The teenager was arrested on December 19, days after the video of her confrontation with the soldiers — who were raiding her hometown of Nabi Saleh, in the central occupied West Bank, and had shot her 14-year-old cousin in the face moments before the video was filmed — went viral on social media.
Now, nearly a month later, al-Tamimi has had her detention extended several times until, on Wednesday, Israel’s Ofer military court refused her lawyers’ request for bail.
During the hearing, the judge reportedly said that they could not grant the teenager bail because she was “too dangerous.”
The court also ruled to indefinitely extend the detention of Ahed’s mother, Nariman, who was detained a day after her daughter. Nariman is being charged with “incitement” for live-streaming the video.
Ahed is being charged on 12 counts, including assaulting an Israeli soldier, interfering with a soldier’s duties, and two past instances of stone throwing — which can carry up to 10 years in Israeli prison.
Since Ahed and Nariman’s arrest, Ahed’s cousin Nour was arrested — she was recently released — her aunt was detained, and recently one of her cousins was detained in an overnight raid.
Earlier this month, Ahed’s distant cousin Musaab al-Tamimi, from Nabi Saleh’s sister village of Deir Nitham, was shot and killed by Israeli forces.
The Tamimi family of Nabi Saleh is well known, internationally, for their activism against the Israeli occupation, which maintains a heavy, near-constant presence in their village.
Ahed Tamimi is famous across Palestine and the Arab world for videos of her, since her childhood, defiantly resisting Israeli soldiers who clash with Palestinians in her village nearly every week.
Two years ago, her family made headlines when an Israeli soldier violently attempted to arrest her younger brother, who had one arm in a cast at the time. Ahed and her mother manager to pull the soldier of her brother and free him.
Since her arrest, Ahed has become the subject of dozens of solidarity campaigns across the world demanding her release from Israeli prison, and an end to Israeli detention of Palestinian children.
According to Palestinian prisoners rights group Addameer, 6,171 Palestinians were being held in Israeli prison as of December, 350 of whom are children.
