Full title - Teenage girls stay in jail as Israel cracks down on settler protests
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Tuesday August 2, 2005
The Guardian
Chaya Belogorodsky, a slight, fair-haired and devout 14-year-old girl, is considered such a grave "danger to public peace" that Israel's highest judges dare not let her out of prison and back to her home in a Jewish settlement.
Chaya and two other teenage girls have been the only prisoners of a special women's wing of Maasiyahu jail - converted to hold hundreds of opponents of prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan to remove Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip this month - since their arrest 33 days ago during a right-wing demonstration against the pullout.
Chaya was detained for trying to prevent the arrest of another girl, for being insolent to a police officer. When threatened with arrest, Chaya replied: "Shut your mouth and arrest me." She was also detained for defying a court order banning her from protests after a previous arrest.
Israel's supreme court has ordered she be held until the end of her trial in several weeks after prosecutors said she may incite other teenagers in to violent protest.
"They aren't the first girls arrested," said Chaya's father, Moshe Belogorodsky, a builder who lives in the religious settlement of Shiloh in the West Bank. "But the government learned that these kids are not afraid of spending a few days in jail and they decided to make them understand that it's not a few days any more, that they can be held for months."
Children of school age have been at the forefront of protests against the Gaza pullout, and arrest has become a badge of honour. Hundreds have been detained for blocking roads, incitement and assaulting police and troops.
More at;
Guardian Unlimited 
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