Palestinian Minor Given 18 Month Jail Term

16-year-old Palestinian Amal Jamal Qabha was jailed for 18 months.

Jerusalem, 04 Jumadil Awwal 1438/01 February 2017 (MINA) – An Israeli military court today sentenced a 16-year-old Palestinian girl to a year and a half in prison for allegedly attempting to stab an Israeli soldier last year at a checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank.

Amal Jamal Qabha, from the village of Tura in the West Bank district of Jenin, was also fined $5,300, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA.

WAFA also reported that Qabha’s parents confirmed that she was being held in Israel’s HaSharon prison.

According to prisoners’ rights group Addameer, some 10,000 Palestinian women and girls have been detained by Israeli forces over the past 45 years. In 2015 alone, Israeli forces detained 106 Palestinian women and girls, which according to the group represented a 70 per cent increase compared to detention numbers in 2013.

In October, Addameer reported that Israel was holding 64 female Palestinian prisoners and some 400 Palestinian minors.

Since a wave of political unrest spread across the occupied Palestinian territory in October 2015, leading to Israeli forces carrying out mass detention campaigns, the number of Palestinian women and girls detained by Israeli forces has risen sharply.

Among those detained between October 2015 and August 2016 were 13 underage girls, some of whom were wounded when Israeli forces detained them, said Addamer. (T/RS05/RS01)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)