Their daughter Ahed and her friend were filmed
lightly striking two of the soldiers, forcing them to leave their courtyard. On Tuesday,
Ahed and Nariman were arrested. Bassem told Haaretz that morning that his
daughter, who will be 17 in January, was angry because Mohammed had been shot
and people in the village didn’t know if he would survive.

Military sources who were questioned about
the shooting said they were aware of the claim that a Palestinian had been
wounded.

The previous Friday morning, soldiers were
stationed in a structure near an uninhabited villa on a hill north of Ahed’s
home. From there, they fired at stone-throwers to disperse them. The villa and
the structure are surrounded by a high wall, with a ladder set up permanently
at the wall.

An eyewitness told Haaretz that Mohammed Tamimi had climbed the ladder. The moment his head appeared
above the wall, he was shot and fell back with the ladder, bleeding profusely.
It is believed that he was shot from only a few meters away.

Over the weekend he underwent complicated
surgery; the doctors extracted the bullet from his skull and stabilized his
condition. He was in an induced coma until Monday morning, when doctors
awakened him; he said a few words to his parents. He was then sedated again.

The Israel Defense Forces’ spokesman told
journalists that on Friday morning “a
violent disturbance developed near the village of Nabi Saleh involving about
200 Palestinians, who burned tires and threw stones at IDF forces. The forces
responded with riot-dispersal means.”

An eyewitness told Haaretz that young men
threw stones toward the road and at Israeli soldiers at a number of points, and
that the soldiers gradually went up into the village, shooting at the young men
and shooting tear-gas canisters between the houses. Two Nabi Saleh residents
said soldiers go into courtyards, set up ambushes and shoot from them.

“We’re
in danger from both directions,” an older resident said. “On the
one hand the tear gas and the shooting, and on the other the stones the young
men throw at the soldiers in our courtyards.”

The man and another Nabi Saleh resident, a
woman, said they believed this was the reason Ahed and her friends insisted on
getting the soldiers out of their courtyard. Bassem, Ahed’s father, said a
paralyzed older woman lives in the neighboring house and his daughter didn’t
want the soldiers to shoot at her.

‘The occupation clock’

During Ahed’s face-off with the soldiers,
Bassem was visiting a relative nearby, when he said tear gas was fired
“imprisoning us in the house.” So he didn’t see what was happening.

“Someone
from the village filmed the incident with Ahed and we decided to post it on the
internet,” he said. “We know it was dangerous because they could
use it against us, but we thought it was important for the Palestinian people
and others to see an example of resistance to soldiers.”

Still, Bassem said he was surprised at the
magnitude of the “incitement,” as he called it, in the Israeli media and on
social media, spurred by the post. On Tuesday, he told reporters who came to
his home that this incitement was the direct reason for his daughter’s arrest.

“We
expected them to come and arrest her,” he told Haaretz. “But
[Monday] night we went to sleep as usual because we aren’t willing to
subordinate our biological clocks to the occupation clock.”

Bassem said that between 3 A.M. and 4 A.M.,
someone phoned them to report that soldiers had entered the village. A few
minutes later they heard loud banging on the door and calls in Arabic to open
up. Tear-gas canisters were fired at the doors of neighboring houses.

Later Bassem discovered that a tear-gas
canister had broken one of their windows. Nariman went to wake up the children
and Bassem opened the door. He said soldiers, both male and female, and Border
Police officers entered the house with more than usual aggression and pushed
him. One of the children said there were 15 soldiers and Border Police
officers, who conducted a search, emptying the closets.

The soldiers did not allow them to film the
search and said they had come to arrest Ahed. They did not let her mother go
with her into a room to get dressed, and they confiscated all the cellphones,
computers and cameras in the house.

A few hours later, Nariman went to the
Binyamin police station, which is on the way to the settlement of Adam, to find
out what had happened with Ahed. During Bassem’s interview with Haaretz at
noontime Tuesday, he received a call from Nariman’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky,
informing him that his wife had been taken in for interrogation and was
arrested. Later, the Israeli police in the West Bank said she was suspected of
incitement and assault.

Ahed’s detention was extended for four
days, and on Wednesday a military judge rejected an appeal to release her.
Also, the young woman who was with Ahed at the confrontation with the soldiers,
Nur Naji Tamimi, was taken from her home and arrested as
well.

Loss of land to a settlement

Over the years, a good deal of Nabi Saleh’s
land has been allocated to the settlement of Halamish, which expanded and added
many homes. At the same time, the Civil Administration does not allow
construction in most of the village because it is located in Area C, which is
under full Israeli control.

In 2009, when Ahed was 8, Nabi Saleh’s
residents began protesting Halamish settlers’ takeover of the spring Ein Qaws.
The spring is located on private land belonging to Nabi Saleh and another
village, Deir Nizam. Last year, the settlers took over another small spring on
village land. During the summer, after members of the Salomon family in
Halamish were murdered,
the segment of the road connecting Nabi Saleh to villages south was closed and
the residents have to obtain a permit to reach their land.

The demonstrations drew worldwide attention
to the village, to the Tamimi family and to the IDF’s
methods for suppressing the protests. Two residents of the village were shot
dead by the IDF during demonstrations.

One of the two was Nariman’s brother,
Rushdi, a Palestinian policeman who had not been throwing stones. Nariman has
been arrested three times by the IDF, and four years ago a solider shot her in
the foot with an air-gun pellet, severely wounding her. Over the past decade,
Bassem has been arrested twice and sentenced to prison for periods of 18 months
and three months.

In April, the villagers decided to stop the
protests after a young man from the town of Salfit was shot and killed while
taking part in a solidarity protest for hunger-striking prisoners. Still,
Bassem said the army continues to come to the village and provoke the
residents, triggering clashes. In recent weeks, the people of Nabi Saleh have
been protesting President Donald Trump’s announcement of U.S. recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.