FACT SHEET

Over the past two decades, Palestinians have sat around the "negotiating table" on numerous occasions with successive Israeli governments and with a stated view of achieving a negotiated resolution to the intractable Palestine-Israel conflict. For years, Israel has claimed that the persistent failure of this so-called peace process was the result of Palestinian intransigence and of Israel having no reliable "partner for peace". However, an independently authenticated cache of confidential documents, records, contemporaneous notes and transcripts of private meetings between the two sides leaked in 2011, revealed a very different picture.

FACT SHEET

As candidates prepared for elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 2006, the Israeli authorities began a campaign of detention and imprisonment to thwart the growing move towards democracy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli authorities began to arrest members of Hamas: 450 were detained in 2005 to prevent their participation in the election the following year; many were held in administrative detention, without trial or charge. Despite this the elections took place and a number of the candidates in prison were elected to the PLC.

The imprisonment of Palestinian children is a common feature of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Defence for Children International (DCI) estimates that since 2000 around 7,500 Palestinian children have been prosecuted by Israeli military courts. Many expected the 164 children (aged 12-17) being held by Israel to be among the 1,000+ Palestinians released in exchange for Gilad Shalit; they weren't. Most (62%) have been detained for "stone throwing".

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: "In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration."

Her upbringing and education

Ahlam al-Tamimi was born on 20/10/1980 in the Jordanian city of al-Zarqa to a Palestinian family with roots in the Palestinian village of al-Nabi Saleh near Ramallah. Ahlam completed her elementary, junior and secondary education in al-Zarqa before returning to Palestine and enrolling in the Department of Media and Journalism at Bir Zeit University. With only a term left until her graduation, the 2001 al-Aqsa Intifada [The Second Palestinian Uprising] broke out across the Occupied Palestinian Territories bringing with it unprecedented levels of violence and repression at the hands of the Israeli authorities. This was exemplified by the horrific assassination policy implemented by the successive governments led by the war criminals, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon.