Organizers with the Comite Palestina Libre – Uruguay created a collective mural calling for freedom for Ahed Tamimi and her fellow Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on 19 January 2018. The mural, which features Ahed amid Palestinian flags, attacking fighter jets and the skyline of Jerusalem, also highlights the call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea with its capital in Jerusalem.
The mural was created as a homage in particular to Palestinian child prisoners; Ahed is one of approximately 350 Palestinian prisoners currently jailed in Israeli prisons. In 2017, 1467 Palestinian children were seized by Israeli occupation forces.
The event also included a performance by Titeres-Girasol, whose puppeteering show was an expression of solidarity with all imprisoned strugglers.
The action comes amid global actions and demonstrations in solidarity with Ahed, who turned 17 behind bars on 31 January. Ahed and her family have long been leaders and organizers in the grassroots indigenous land defense movement in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. The village of 600 has faced repeated threats and land confiscation by the illegal settlement of Halamish, including the theft of the village’s spring.
Ahed was seized in a pre-dawn raid by occupation forces on 19 December, days after a video of her slapping an occupation soldier on her family’s land was widely circulated on Facebook. Both Ahed and her mother, Nariman Tamimi, are currently imprisoned; though they are both held in HaSharon prison, they are separated from one another and have been denied contact. The video was taken shortly after Ahed’s 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi, was shot in the head by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by another occupation soldier in the same unit.
Organizing is continuing in Uruguay and around the world to build solidarity with Ahed and her fellow Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and activists with the Comite Palestina Libre will announce further activities in the coming days.
