JERUSALEM: With her mane of curly hair and piercing eyes Ahed Tamimi, arrested on Monday for allegedly inciting violence and terrorism, is for Palestinians and their supporters an icon of resistance to Israeli occupation.

Images of the now 22-year-old’s defiance have been beamed across the world for over a decade: aged 11 brandishing her fist under the nose of Israeli soldiers, aged 14 fighting to free a detained boy, aged 16 in prisoner’s clothing surrounded by Israeli police.

Her family home in Nabi Salih in the north of the West Bank — territory occupied by Israel since 1967 — is a hotbed for Palestinian and foreign activists organising against raids by Israeli forces and settlers.

Tamimi is currently under interrogation for an Instagram post which, according to an Israeli security source, called for a “massacre of Israelis” in the West Bank and made “reference to Hitler.”

But her mother Narimane Tamimi — whose husband has also been in prison the past two weeks — denies that she wrote the post and added that “when Ahed tries to open a social media account, it’s immediately blocked”.

It was not immediately able to verify whether the Instagram account in question, which was blocked on Monday morning, actually belonged to Tamimi.

Her arrest is the latest turn in an unrest over the campaigning of the young activist who spent eight months in an Israeli prison in 2018. “Every word I say, it’s a weight, a responsibility, and so it’s something heavy that I carry,” she said in France in 2018.

Her activism earned her a reception by Real Madrid that year.

Following her arrest on Monday social media, particularly in Arab countries, was once again flooded with images of the young activist.

‘Responsible resistance’

In mobile phone footage filmed in December 2017 she is seen with her cousin approaching two soldiers her family said were trespassing in their house before kicking, punching and slapping them.

She was also photographed while wearing a Tweety Pie shirt and biting the hand of an Israeli soldier in 2015, trying to stop the arrest of her brother.

In 2012, images of her brandishing her fist under the nose of Israeli soldiers earned her a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Born in 2001 in Nabi Salih, she said she dreamed of becoming a footballer before being drawn into activism.

Her father Bassem Tamimi described his daughter as “shy”, but “someone who is mature enough to reject the occupation responsibly”. He said his daughter was marked by stories of incursions and arrests by Israeli forces, and that the family had several “martyrs”, including Ahed’s uncle and aunt.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2023