8-year-old girl is West Bank’s youngest citizen journalist

An eight-year-old Palestinian girl is opposing the Israeli occupation of her West Bank village—with a mobile telephone.

Jana Tamimi makes news reports about the regular conflicts with Israeli soldiers in Nabi Saleh, filming video on a camera phone and posting it online.

She films her reports about her village at a time when demonstrations against Israeli settlements are taking place on a weekly basis after Friday prayers.

Tamimi said she wants to deliver the voice of her people to the world so they can gain more international support.

"When we started to go out for marches there weren't a lot of photographers with us so I had an idea to document and deliver our message. The message of all Palestinians and Palestinian children to the world so they come to support us and to free Palestine and live under freedom and get our rights," she said.

Local Palestinians and international peace activists hold weekly rallies after Friday prayers to protest about land lost to Israeli settlements.

Residents of Nabi Saleh, which has a population of around 600, say 60 percent of the village's territory has been seized by settlers, including a local spring, which they demand access to.

Protests have been held for the past five years.

"The occupation is depriving us even from the most important right, which is the right to live, the right of swimming in the sea. When we go to school we always get delayed at barriers, which make us late for lessons at school. We want to live in freedom so when we walk in the street no settler will run us over. We want to feel that our land is secure and that we can walk in the street or on the hills anywhere without having Zionists shooting us or settlers running us over," Tamimi added.

Jana's mother, Nawal Tamimi, said her daughter's activism is a result of growing up surrounded by conflict.

"The demonstrations started in Nabi Saleh when she was three years old. Because our home is at the entrance of the village we are in the center of the events where the clashes take place and where the firing of tear gas and other grenades take place as well, so she grew up with fear and pain," she told Reuters TV.

About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem among 2.4 million Palestinians. The World Court has deemed Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal. Many Jewish settlers claim a God-given right to the West Bank, which they call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria. — Reuters