Israeli police detain 14-year-old Palestinian girl in the West Bank

The Israeli army on Thursday evening arrested a teenage Palestinian girl at the Qalandia military checkpoint, north of Jerusalem, after she allegedly threatened border police with a knife.

14-year-old Yathrib Salah Rayyan, from the village of Beit Duqqu northwest of Jerusalem, was “overpowered” by Israeli troops as she entered the car-only lane of the checkpoint, according to the Ma’an News Agency.

An army spokesperson told Ma'an that a "female Palestinian suspect" approached a "civilian security guard" carrying a knife.

Footage released by the Jerusalem Post appears to show pepper spray being used against the girl before she is wrestled to the ground by soldiers.      

The arrest comes a day after Israeli forces detained an eight-year-old Palestinian in East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood and two days after a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was detained in the city.

Last month, an official from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) alleged that more than 10,000 Palestinian minors in the West Bank and Jerusalem had been held by the Israeli army for varying periods since 2000.

A Palestinian man was also shot on Wednesday after a stabbing attack at a local supermarket in a settlement near Jerusalem.

Three Israeli shoppers were injured during the attack, when it is thought that a Palestinian began stabbing shoppers at random, according to i24 News, a Tel Aviv-based TV station.

The incident happened at a branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain in the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, seven kilometres east of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem and the West Bank have been rocked by unrest for months as tensions over repeated incursions by Jewish nationalists into Haram al-Sharif, which contains the al-Aqsa Mosque and is regarded as holy to Muslims and Jews - who refer to it as the Temple Mount - have repeatedly boiled over.