04/19/07

Subject of AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo says God on her side

By AMY TEIBEL
Associated Press Writer

AMONA, West Bank (AP) -- The photo caught the world's attention: a lone 15-year-old girl holding back a wall of riot police moving in to demolish Jewish homes illegally erected in the West Bank.

Speaking for the first time since The Associated Press image won a Pulitzer prize this week, the girl, who would identify herself only as Nili, said God was on her side during the confrontation.

"In the photo you see me -- one person as it were -- against many. But that's only an illusion," said Nili, now two weeks shy of her 17th birthday, as she stood amid the ruins of the nine homes demolished in Amona in February 2006.

"Behind the many stood one man -- (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert," who ordered the demolition. "Behind me stood the Lord Blessed Be He, and the people of Israel."

Nili, a shy, gangly teen born in Israel to American parents, was one of several thousand Jewish protesters who barricaded themselves behind barbed wire and on rooftoops in an unsuccessful effort to keep club-wielding riot troops from demolishing the homes built on private Palestinian land.

More than 160 demonstrators and security forces were wounded in the confrontations at the hilltop enclave -- one of dozens of outposts settlers have set up in the past decade to try to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

On Thursday, Nili posed with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo near the spot where it was snapped.

The photo, taken by AP photographer Oded Balilty, won in the category of Breaking News Photography. The image has won more than 10 prizes in international photography competitions.

Nili, an Orthodox Jew clad modestly in a long black skirt and black shawl, said she had no desire for fame. "I think it's an invasion of my privacy and I don't want it," she said.

Balilty, who does not know the girl, called her "the bravest girl I ever saw in my life."

He recalled breaking away from an area where most of the media attention was focused to look for activity elsewhere.

"I saw this line of police coming toward one of the houses. I saw her hesitating on the other side. She started to run toward the line of the police officers. It just happened," he said.

AP's executive editor, Kathleen Carroll, called it "a stunning single image that captures the chaos and emotion of that evacuation."

Nili's mother, Devorah, who immigrated from Miami 30 years ago, describes the girl as "just a normal kid" who likes to cook. Nili studies biology and said she hopes to one day work in alternative medicine.

Her appearance at a news conference in Amona on Thursday was her first return to the outpost since that chaotic day more than a year ago.

Coming back "strengthened my faith," she said.