Israeli military court to try Ahed Tamimi, Palestinian teen protest icon, for slapping soldiers

Palestinian protest icon Ahed Tamimi is to go on trial before an Israeli military court tomorrow for slapping and punching two Israeli soldiers an act Palestinians say embodies their David vs.

Goliath struggle against a brutal military occupation and Israel portrays as a staged provocation meant to embarrass its military.

Israel's full-throttle prosecution of Tamimi, one of an estimated 300 Palestinian minors in Israeli jails, and a senior Israeli official's recent stunning revelation that he once had parliament investigate whether the blond, blue-eyed Tamimis are a "real" Palestinian family have helped stoke ongoing interest in the case.

The teen with the curly mane of hair who turned 17 in jail last month has become the latest symbol of the long- running battle between Palestinians and Israelis over global public opinion.

The case touches on what constitutes legitimate resistance to Israel's rule over millions of Palestinians, already in its 51st year after Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in 1967.

Ahed Tamimi's supporters see a brave girl who struck two armed soldiers outside her West Bank home in frustration after having just learned that Israeli troops seriously wounded a 15-year-old cousin, shooting him in the head from close range with a rubber bullet during nearby stone-throwing clashes.

Israel has treated Tamimi's actions as a criminal offense, indicting her on charges of assault and incitement that could potentially land her in prison for several years.

Tamimi's middle-of-the-night arrest from her home in December and her pre-trial court appearances, flanked by Israeli guards and looking impassive, have evoked a sense of history on a loop.

Another generation of Palestinians seems locked in a cycle of protests and arrests by Israel, three decades after Palestinians staged their first uprising, throwing stones and burning tires in the streets.

Since the mid-1990s, several U.S.-mediated rounds of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel have ended in failure.

Gaps in positions only widened in the past decade, as Israeli settlement expansion continued and the Palestinians failed to end a crippling political split between an internationally backed self-rule government in parts of the West Bank and the Islamic militant group Hamas which dominates Gaza.

Tamimi's father Bassem, who threw his first stone at the age of 14 and was an activist in the first uprising, said he expects the military court will deal harshly with his daughter and that she might remain in prison for some time.

His wife, Nariman, is being prosecuted in the same Dec.

15 scuffle in their village of Nabi Saleh and has been locked up alongside their daughter.

Despite the personal pain, the father said he is optimistic heading into the courtroom and that he believes he is witnessing progress.He argues that his daughter's case and the outpouring of support for her more than 1.7 million people have already signed an online petition calling for her release signal the beginning of the final chapter of Israel's occupation.