Malak Al-Khateeb. Source: google images

Tears fell down her cheeks when the judge read the sentence, she shivered, cuffed and in a cage, surrounded by armed occupation soldiers. Her parents, sitting but a few meters away from her, shocked, unable to touch their daughter, hug her, comfort her, or wipe away her tears. “They treated her as an adult…. She is but a child.” Said Ali Al-Khateeb, in his sixties, his face tired, wrinkled with years under occupation, and great sadness in his tired eyes… “When the judge read the sentence”, Abu Yousif recalls:” I saw Malak wiping away her tears and shivering, I felt that a fire was burning inside my heart”. Her 50 year-old mother Khawla says: “In court, I cried with my daughter who is separated from me by a few meters, we could not touch her or talk to her, I wished I could embrace her…