Child Detention

On December 19, 2017 Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi was arrested after slapping an Israeli soldier on her family's property. She was taken from her home in the middle of the night, interrogated without an adult present, and eventually signed a plea deal and was sentenced to eight months in prison. Ahed Tamimi became a symbol of Palestinian resistance, but she is only one out of hundreds of Palestinian children who face Israel's military court system every year. In this episode of Unsettled, we wanted to find out — On what grounds are children arrested? What actually happens to a child once they’ve been arrested? How does child detention impact both individuals and communities in the West Bank? We spoke to Ahed's father Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian student and activist Yazan Meqbil, and attorney Brad Parker of Defense for Children International-Palestine.