This is how 3 Palestinian women stopped an Israeli soldier from arresting a boy

A video was posted to YouTube on Friday that showed an Israeli soldier putting an injured 12-year-old Palestinian boy in a headlock during an attempted arrest.

The four-minute clip was shot in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, where activists regularly gather to protest against Israeli settlements, which are considered to be illegal under international law.

In the video a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, who has his right arm in a cast, screams as an armed Israeli soldier roughly attempts to detain him.

Two Palestinian women and a girl sweep down a hill and try to pull the Israeli soldier off the boy.

“Get him off,” they are heard to shout at the soldier. “He is a little boy. He is a little boy.”

The women desperately pull and hit the soldier with their hands.

Palestinian children are regularly detained and imprisoned by Israeli forces – at the end of May 2015 rights group B’Tselem reported that 163 Palestinian minors were being held in Israeli custody.

As the two women struggle to pull the Israeli soldier off the Palestinian child, another soldier enters the scene and hits one of the women across the face.

The women, who can be heard screaming and crying throughout, continue to hit the soldier holding the boy. Eventually the soldiers relent and flee the scene, leaving the boy behind.

Haaretz reported that one of the soldiers was “lightly wounded”. The Israeli daily said that one Palestinian and one foreign activist were detained during the clashes at Friday’s protest in Nabi Saleh.

The Israeli army said their soldiers had decided to arrest the 12-year-old Palestinian boy because he had thrown stones during the protest.

“The youth who was photographed was identified by the lookout force as a stone-thrower, and because of this it was decided to detain him. At the time of the arrest, a violent provocation by a number of Palestinians developed, including women and children. In light of the violent altercation, the commander decided to not to go ahead with the detention."

Activists at the scene told Haaretz that they had not seen the boy throw any stones.