22-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi arrested for 'inciting terror': Israeli army

The Israeli army said Monday it had arrested the prominent 22-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi during a raid in the occupied West Bank.

"Ahed Tamimi was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence and terrorist activities in the town of Nabi Salih" near the city of Ramallah, an army spokesman told AFP. "Tamimi was transferred to Israeli security forces for further questioning."

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The activist was arrested during an Israeli army raid "aimed at apprehending individuals suspected of being involved in terrorist activities and incitement to hatred" in the north of the West Bank, the spokesman added.

When AFP inquired about the reasons for her arrest, a security source forwarded an Instagram post, which has circulated widely on social media and is attributed to the young activist.

According to the post, written in Arabic and Hebrew, she called for the massacre of Israelis in explicitly violent terms, referring to Hitler. The activist's mother, Nariman al-Tamimi, denied she wrote the post.

"There are dozens of (online) pages in Ahed's name with her photo, with which she has no connection," Tamimi told AFP.

She added that her husband, Bassem al-Tamimi, was arrested on October 20 and since then there was no news about his whereabouts.

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

Tamimi became famous at age 14 when she was filmed biting an Israeli soldier to prevent him from arresting her brother who had his arm in a cast.

She has become an icon of the Palestinian cause and a large portrait of her has been painted on the Israeli separation wall with the West Bank in Bethlehem near Jerusalem.

She was arrested in 2017 and held for eight months for slapping two Israeli soldiers in the courtyard of her family home in the West Bank as she asked them to leave.

Since the start of the Gaza war triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Israeli security forces have carried out large-scale arrests of Palestinians suspected of links to Hamas or of inciting violence.

A spike in tensions and violence has claimed the lives of more than 150 Palestinians in the West Bank since then, most killed by Israeli soldiers or by settlers according to the Palestinian health ministry.

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