Family welcomes the release of D al-Wawi, who was arrested in February on charges of attempted manslaughter.

by Rania Zabaneh, Dalia Hatuqa, Al Jazeera

Halhul, occupied West Bank –   At the Jbara checkpoint near Tulkarem, the al-Wawi family and human rights groups’ representatives waited patiently. The 12-year-old finally emerged, after having spent 2.5 months in a prison, making her the youngest Palestinian female detainee. As her relatives embraced her, the girl, clad in a pink shirt, fought back tears and said nothing.

D* was arrested on February 9 near the illegal settlement of Karmei Tzur, just north of her hometown of Halhul. Now, out on early parole, D served more than half of her sentence of 4.5 months in an Israeli prison for attempted voluntary manslaughter and illegal possession of a knife.

The family had appealed her detention, citing international legal norms, and Israeli law, which prohibits the imprisonment of children younger than 14 for the country’s citizens.

D is the first child in her family, which includes six girls and three boys, to see the insides of a prison cell. Her father, 54-year-old Ismael al-Wawi, had been working in Israel for more than 25 years before Israeli authorities revoked his permit on the day she was arrested.

According to Israeli military court documents, D approached the settlement with a knife hidden under her school uniform. The documents cited footage that showed the girl lying on the ground after she was told to give up the knife.

This was not the child her family knew. A lively girl, D spent a lot of her time playing outside with her cousins – something that left their relatives wondering how she would cope in a prison cell.

“Even inside the courtroom, she was playing,” said Sabha al-Wawi, D’s mother. “She’d move her shackled feet or her hands around to play with the handcuffs. Even the judge told her to stop.”

Her mother recalled an incident that left her questioning the Israeli authorities’ version of events.

“One day, I overheard the girls talking about the spate of knife attacks. D and her eldest sister both said to each other, ‘If anyone tells you I’ve done something like this, please don’t believe them. I would never attack anyone,'” Sabha said.

The day D was arrested, her mother feared she was either injured or killed – the fate of many Palestinians who have either carried out attacks or were accused of being assailants in a spate of unrest that began in October 2015. Since then, 207 Palestinians and 33 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed.

On March 28, more than a month after the incident, D was finally allowed to see her mother, but they were banned from any physical contact. Before she was detained, D had been asking about the fate of the children of Palestinian journalist Mohammad al-Qeeq, who at the time was on a months-long hunger strike, if he were to die.

“She kept wondering – who will take care of his children?” Sabha recalled. “Who will take them out on excursions, who will buy them gifts on Eid, who will feed them?”

Even as the family welcomed D’s release, they were still reeling from the loss of Ismael’s job, their only source of income. D’s parents also have to pay a $2,000 court-ordered fine.

“I’m unemployed now and taking out loans to cultivate a plot of land that we have,” Ismael said. “It will be a while before the land yields any produce. So in the meantime, I have reached out to several institutions to help financially.”

There are 7,000 Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons, according to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Prisoners Affairs Commission. The figures include 70 women, 750 in administrative detention, 700 sick detainees, and 30 who have been imprisoned for more than 20 years.

The figures also include 440 Palestinian children, who are held in Israeli detention for “security” offences, according to Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI), a Ramallah-based rights group. This is the highest tally since the Israel Prison Service started providing figures in 2008, the group said. More than 100 of these children are between 12 and 15, while 12 are girls and seven are in administrative detention.

A majority of children endure physical violence in the Israeli military detention system, according to a recent report by DCI called No Way to Treat a Child. The “widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children” includes detaining them in the middle of the night, often without notifying the parents of the reasons for the arrest.

“International law is clear: Children should only be detained as a last resort, for the shortest appropriate period of time, and under absolutely no circumstances should they be subjected to torture or ill-treatment,” said Khaled Quzmar, the group’s general director. “Why then, year after year, do we see Palestinian children experiencing widespread, systematic, and institutionalised ill-treatment at the hands of Israeli forces?”

Israeli authorities said D confessed to planning a stabbing attack, but DCI found that “many children maintain their innocence, but plead guilty as it is the fastest way to get out of the system. Most receive plea deals of less than 12 months. Trials, on the other hand, can last a year, possibly longer. Bail is rarely granted and most children remain behind bars as they await trial”.

The group also said that interrogators often use “position abuse, threats and isolation to coerce confessions”, documenting 66 cases in which children were held in solitary confinement.

Sabha says the family believes D has “suffered a grave injustice”.

“She’s too young to hurt anybody. She’s not even physically capable of attacking anyone. She did not pose a threat,” Sabha said. “She is paying a heavy price for something that did not happen.”

At least ten Palestinians injured by live fire in clashes with Israeli army in occupied West Bank refugee camp.

by Al Jazeera

Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian and injured several more by live ammunition during an incursion into a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Eyad Omar Sajadiya, 22, was shot dead, while at least ten others were injured by live fire during Tuesday morning’s clashes with Israeli troops in the Qalandiya refugee camp, according to Palestinian medical sources.

The armed clashes broke out after an army jeep entered the camp – situated between occupied East Jerusalem and the central West Bank city of Ramallah – by mistake, an Israeli police spokesperson told the AFP news agency.

Palestinian protests against Israel’s occupation have increased and tensions have soared in the occupied territories and Israel since October, as anger gave way to violence.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 178 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Before dawn on Monday morning, Israeli forces carried out raids in cities and towns across the West Bank, arresting at least 27 Palestinians.

by Ma’an News Agency

Israeli forces on Wednesday tore down two buildings in occupied East Jerusalem, claiming one had been built without permits, while the other stood in the way of a new route connecting Israeli settlements.

Locals said that Israeli forces stormed and closed off an area in the Jabal al-Mukabbri neighborhood early Wednesday before bulldozers moved in and demolished a building under construction along with its surrounding wall.

The building’s owner, Ibrahim Ali Surri, told Ma’an that the building measured 60 square meters and he had been intending to move into it in coming weeks.

He said that Jerusalem’s municipal authorities ordered him to halt construction a month ago and he had been trying to obtain the necessary permits since then.

He said Wednesday’s demolition took place “without prior notice.”

Separately, Israeli forces also demolished a home in Shufat neighborhood, reportedly to clear way for a road — Route 21 — which will run through Shufat to connect the illegal Israeli settlements of Pisgat Zeev, Ramat Shlom and Neve Yaakov.

The plans are expected to divide the neighborhood in two and will require the confiscation of hundreds of dunams of land.

The home’s owner, Kifaya al-Rashq, told Ma’an the the home was built 15 years ago and houses 19 family members.

He said that Israeli forces stormed the home and forced his family to evacuate, despite the cold weather, before they proceeded with the demolition.

Some 579 homes have been destroyed in East Jerusalem over the last twelve years, leaving 2,133 Palestinians homeless in total, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

Israeli government policies make it nearly impossible for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to obtain building permits, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Eight-month-old child suffocates from tear gas inhalation, bringing death toll of Palestinians to 69 in one month.

by Al Jazeera

Three Palestinians – including an eight-month-old baby – have died from Israeli fire and another is critically wounded, while many others were injured in West Bank and Gaza protests.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed on Friday the death of Ramadan Mohammed Faisal Thawabta, the baby who suffocated from tear gas inhalation in a village near Bethlehem.

He died in Beit Fajjar in clashes as the Israeli army sprayed tear gas at Palestinians.

The ministry also confirmed the first incident, citing the death of Qasem Sabaana, 20, and the injury of a 17-year-old, as yet unnamed, at a checkpoint south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

An Al Jazeera journalist who witnessed the incident said police fired at least seven shots at the Palestinian now fighting for his life in hospital.

Israeli police claimed that the two Palestinians had approached the checkpoint on a motorbike carrying knives.

Also in Jerusalem on Friday, another Palestinian succumbed to wounds inflicted earlier in the morning.

Train security officers shot the alleged attacker on the light rail in occupied East Jerusalem with live ammunition after he allegedly attacked an Israeli settler, the police said.

Since October 1, Israeli forces or settlers have killed 69 Palestinians – including unarmed protesters, bystanders and alleged attackers – across Israel, the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Nine Israelis have died in stabbing or shooting incidents in the same period.

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker in Jerusalem said the city is heavily policed and Palestinians are monitored closely.

“Israeli security forces have clamped down on occupied East Jerusalem; it’s completely surrounded. People have to walk one by one, Palestinians often have to lift their shirts to show they are not carrying a weapon,” she said.

Clashes erupt

Outrage over the killings sparked Palestinian-led protests outside the Israeli settlement of Beit El, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah.

Around 500 Palestinians protested and clashed with Israeli forces, according to witnesses.

Israeli troops shot at least one protester in the chest with live ammunition, said Mohannad Darabee, a photographer at the clashes.

“Medics told us he is in critical condition,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that an Israeli Jeep ran over another protester.

Orient Radio, a local media outlet, captured the soldiers running the protester over on video.

“When medics tried to help him and journalists approached the area, the soldiers attacked all of them with pepper spray and [tear] gas. Then they arrested the man [who was run over].

“People are angry about the martyr killed in Nablus. They [Israeli forces] are firing a lot of live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets – they are shooting indiscriminately,” Darabee said.

Ezz Zanoun, a Gaza-based photographer, said that clashes are also taking place in areas across Gaza’s border with Israel.

“Two journalists have been hit with rubber-coated steel bullets” near the Nahal Oz Israeli military outpost, he told Al Jazeera, referring to an area near eastern Gaza City.

At least 2,000 people participated in the demonstrations, Zanoun added.

“The Israelis are using rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas,” he said. “Participation in the protests here in Gaza is growing.”

Israeli soldiers cursed at the protesters in Hebrew and Arabic, and waved an Israeli flag at them, witnesses said.

“The soldiers did not wait long to open fire,” said Zanoun. “The feeling among Palestinians is that this has become something routine for them, to fire quickly.”

‘Unlawful measures’

Tension has surged amid resentment over Israeli settlements and the incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third holiest site for Muslims.

Rights groups have slammed Israel for its harsh measures as it continues to crack down on Palestinians.

This week, Amnesty International warned Israeli forces to end its “pattern of unlawful killings”.

“In some cases, Israeli forces appear to have ripped up the rulebook and resorted to extreme and unlawful measures,” the group said.

“They seem increasingly prone to using lethal force against anyone they perceive as posing a threat, without ensuring that the threat is real.”