After 4-day detention, Israeli court places Palestinian child under one-month house arrest

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Palestine Foundation Information Center) An Israeli court has placed a Palestinian child from occupied Jerusalem under house arrest for a month, away from her family home, and fined her 3,000 shekels (about $800).

Four days ago, Israeli occupation police arrested the Jerusalemite child for finding slogans supporting the resistance written on her school notebooks and for placing a paper bearing “inciteful statements” on a police vehicle, according to a statement by the occupation police.

The arrested Jerusalemite child is a 12-year-old girl named Tuqa Ghazzawi from the Al-Thawri neighborhood in Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque. She is a seventh-grade student.

The occupation police arrested the child on March 6 while on her way home back from school. She was brought before the court last Friday morning, and her detention was extended until Monday.

The occupation police said in a statement that they arrested the child after stopping her in the Old City of Occupied Jerusalem, and while searching her bag, they found “slogans supporting Hamas.”

The child had placed a paper on a police vehicle that read “We will win or die” and “Victory is from God and liberation is near”, the police added.

Since October 7, 2023, the occupation has arrested hundreds of Jerusalemites on charges of “incitement” and “verbal or written support for the resistance”, including a young man who was arrested for chanting national songs loudly in the Old City, and many Jerusalemites for wearing necklaces with national symbols or pictures of martyrs.

Since that date, the occupation police have submitted about 1,000 requests to open an investigation against Palestinians on the charge of incitement, 500 of which have been approved by the occupation’s public prosecution.

The police released Tuqa’s father, the Jerusalemite Khalil Ghazzawi, after being detained and interrogated for several hours, but kept his daughter arrested for the fourth consecutive day.