Dozens of Arab and Jewish activists protested outside the Damon prison in northern Israel on Sunday, August 29, to demand the release of a pregnant Palestinian mother, Anhar Al-Deek, who is charged with the attempted stabbing of an Israeli settler. Zo Haderech reports that among the protestors were MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash – Joint List), Dahil Hamed, head of the Hadash faction in the Histadrut, and several members of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI).
MK Aida Touma-Sliman (first from right) stands among activists outside the entrance to the Damon Prison in northern Israel calling for the release of Anhar Al-Deek, last Sunday, August 29. The sign in the center with the prisoner’s photograph reads “Free Anhar al-Deek; Let her give birth in her home.” The sign to the left reads: “Freedom for all Palestinian women prisoners.” (Photo: Zo Haderech)
Al-Deek, 25, from the village of Naima near Ramallah, was arrested in March at the illegal outpost of Sdeh Ephraim, which lies near the Palestinian town of Ras Karkar in the occupied central West Bank. In April of this year, an Israeli military judge ordered that Al-Deek remain behind bars until the end of the proceedings against her. According to Israeli military prosecutors, Al-Deek broke into the farmhouse of Sdeh Ephraim, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and sought to attack one of the farm’s owners, Leah Ze’ev, who called her husband on the phone for help. Eitan Ze’ev, Leah’s husband, has himself been on trial over the past year and a half for the wrongful shooting of a number of Palestinians on a farm near Nablus in July 2020. As part of the proceedings against him, Ze’ev’s gun was confiscated by Israeli military officials.
The incident for which Al-Deek is currently imprisoned was not the first violent encounter between the Ze’ev family and Palestinians at Sdeh Ephraim. The founding of this illegal outpost near Ras Karkar in 2017 occasioned protests — some of them violent — by Palestinian residents.
Another terror attack allegedly took place at the farm in February 2021, when a young Palestinian accountant, Khalid Maher Nofal, was shot and killed by Eitan Ze’ev in the dead of night under circumstances which remain unclear. Based only on Ze’ev’s testimony, the army quickly announced that the Notal’s death ensued as he was about to foment a terror attack against the Ze’evs, and was shot in what amounted to self defense. However, despite this precipitate claim, the army also acknowledged that Nofal had arrived at the settlement unarmed.
