Dareen Tatour sentenced to five months in prison over poem

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour has been sentenced to five months in prison for "inciting terrorism" in a poem that she posted on social media.

On Tuesday, Tatour, 36, an Israeli citizen was sentenced by the Nazareth district court after having already served nearly three years in house arrest.

Tatour was arrested in an Israeli police raid in October 2015 after publishing a poem titled "Resist, my people resist them" and spent the following months under house arrest, during which time she was barred from publishing her work and accessing the internet.

Lawyer Gaby Lasky told Al Jazeera that Tatour will begin her incarceration in another week, but that they will appeal the decision and sentencing.

"I don't think that writing a poem, even if it's against the government, is a crime," Lasky said. 

"It's regretful that in a country that believes in a democracy, will sentence to jail a poet because of a poem that she wrote. The prosecution wanted to send her to jail between 15 and 26 months [but] the judge decided to send her for five months which is still a long time in prison."

In May, Tatour was convicted of online incitement to "terrorism" for using a poem as the soundtrack to images of Palestinians in violent confrontations with Israeli troops that she posted on Facebook and YouTube. Tatour has denied the charges.

In the video, which received less than 300 views, Tatour urged Palestinians to never "agree to a peace solution".

After the hearing, Tatour said she expected a conviction. "I am ready for anything, and I do not regret anything I have done." 

She said there was no call for violence in her poem, but calls for a struggle, which Israeli authorities interpreted as violent.

The indictment against her includes her lines:

"I will not succumb to the 'peaceful solution'

Never lower my flags

Until I evict them from my land."

'Only Arabs go to jail'

As a resident of the Galilee village of Reineh, near Nazareth, Tatour is a member of Israel's Palestinian minority, who form nearly 20 percent of Israel's population.

Palestinians remained on their land following Israel's establishment in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes known as the "the Nakba" or "Catastrophe".

"My trial ripped off the masks," Tatour told Israeli newspaper Haaretz, following her conviction in May.

"The whole world will hear my story. The whole world will hear what Israel's democracy is. A democracy for Jews only. Only Arabs go to jail. The court said I am convicted of terrorism. If that's my terrorism, I give the world a terrorism of love."

More than 150 American literary figures, including nine Pulitzer Prize winners, have called on Israel to free Tatour, including Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, Natasha Trethewey and Jacqueline Woodson.

International writers group PEN defended Tatour in a statement following her conviction in May.

"Dareen Tatour has been convicted for doing what writers do every day - we use our words to peacefully challenge injustice," it said.