On Monday, November 6, at around 3:30 am local time, some 15 Israeli army soldiers set off on foot toward the home of the parents of 22-year-old Ahed Tamimi, a young icon of the Palestinian cause. A convoy of military jeeps followed the soldiers as they entered Nabi Salih, a village of 500 residents and the Tamimi family's historic stronghold in the Ramallah region of the West Bank. In the main street, an officer set himself up on a roof to "control the area," according to Osama Tamimi, 27, one of the activist's cousins. For an hour, the Israeli army searched the house where Nariman and Najwa, the activist's mother and grandmother, currently live. Just before 4:30 am, Tamimi was found in a room in the house and taken into custody.
In a video filmed by one of her relatives and seen by Le Monde, the young woman with long curly hair and pale eyes could be seen with her hands behind her back, flanked by four soldiers. One soldier pulled her by the arm toward their vehicles. According to an Israeli army spokesperson, the activist was arrested for "inciting violence and terrorist activities."
On Monday morning, on X (formerly Twitter), Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, welcomed the detention of a "terrorist" whom he accused of "sympathy and support for the Nazi human beings on social media" since the start of the war. The Jewish extremist was referring to a post on Instagram at the end of October, in which the young woman allegedly wrote, in Arabic and Hebrew, to the Jewish populations illegally settled in the West Bank: "We will shoot you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We will drink your blood and eat your skulls."
Several of her family members claim that the young woman never posted this message. "She didn't write that, that Instagram profile doesn't belong to her," said Nariman, her mother. "There are dozens of accounts in her name on social media, created by people we don't know." On Instagram, the account that the statement was attributed to is now inaccessible.
It's already been over 10 years since Ahed Tamimi, the daughter of two influential opponents of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, became one of the most famous figures of Palestinian resistance. Even when she was not yet a teenager, she was never afraid to confront the soldiers who regularly descended on her village. Located opposite the Israeli settlement of Halamish, established in 1977, the small commune has organized a non-violent demonstration every week since 2009 to denounce the constant pressure put on them by Israeli forces. In 2012, a photo showed her at age 11, fist raised, ready to hit an Israeli soldier. The young Tamimi was soon received by Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who expressed his support.
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