Oren Ziv - Twelve-year-old Dima al-Wawi, the youngest Palestinian in Israeli prison, was released after two-and-a-half months on Sunday. Israeli authorities delivered her to the Jabara checkpoint in the West Bank in the early afternoon hours, where she was met by her parents and waiting journalists.
Al-Wawi was arrested 75 days earlier at the entrance to the Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur near Hebron for being in possession of a knife. She surrendered the knife to a security guard at the entrance of the settlement and was arrested without incident.
She was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment as part of a plea deal in which she was convicted of attempted manslaughter. The Israel Prison Service agreed to release the 12 year old two months before the end of her sentence, however, after an appeal by her parents and a growing international campaign.
The case highlighted the separate legal systems that Palestinian and Jewish children are subject to in the West Bank. Al-Wawi, a Palestinian, was sent to prison under military law, which considers the age of criminal culpability to be 12. Jewish child of the same age living on the same land and accused of the same crime would be subject to Israeli law, wherein the age of criminal culpability is 14; the Jewish child would not be sent to prison.
Al-Wawi ran to hug her parents as soon as she was released from the Israel Prison Service transport vehicle Sunday afternoon. Dozens of Palestinian and international journalists and photographers rushed her and tried to get her to make a statement. The 12-year-old girl had difficulty speaking but eventually said she wasn’t scared and that she hopes all Palestinian prisoners are released soon.
Her mother, Umm Rashid, told +972, “I am happy that she was released but am furious about the situation. I was angry the day she was arrested and on every one of the 75 days that she was in Israeli prison. She was a girl who was always happy and wanting to play and now she came out of prison scared and weak.”
“Maybe she had a knife when they arrested her but she is just a child,” Umm Rashid continued. “What would she have been able to do with a knife? In Israel they don’t treat children the way they treat our children.” Al-Wawi, like many other Palestinian prisoners, was held in a prison outside the occupied territories, which is a violation of international law.
Two legal systems
One of the most prominent and disturbing characteristics of Israeli military rule in the West Bank is the creation and development of an official and institutionalized legal regime of two separate legal systems, on an ethnic-national basis.
The long-standing residence of citizens of the State of Israel, the occupying power, in settlements at the heart of the occupied territory - which contravenes international law in and of itself - has led to systematic discrimination that is anchored in legislation and rulings that affect every aspect in the lives of Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
This dual system of law is the focal point of a new report by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, “One Rule, Two Legal Systems: Israel’s Regime of Laws in the West Bank.” 972mag