2002 Hebron ambush
Encyclopedia
The 2002 Hebron ambush took place in the Wadi an-Nasara neighborhood in Hebron
in the West Bank on November 15, 2002. Israeli forces were subjected to a series of ambushes by fighters from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Twelve Israeli combatants, including three officers, were killed in the battle, as were three of the Palestinian attackers. The battle was referred to in Israel as "The attack in the worshipers route",. In Arabic the attack became known as the Battle of Wadi an-Nasara (the Valley of the Christians), "Ma’rakat Wadi an-Nasara”, after the place where the battle took place. The place where the attack took place became known as the "Alley of Death" both in Hebrew and Arabic. The ambush was initially dubbed as the "Sabbath massacre" by official Israeli spokespersons.
The attacks were carried out simultaneously in a narrow alley which was used as a passage from Kiryat Arba
to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and at the south gate of Kiryat Arba
. During the ambushes, 12 Israelis were killed (five border policemen, four IDF soldiers and three members of the Kiryat Arba Emergency Response Team) and 14 Israeli combatants were injured. Among those killed were three high-ranking Israeli officers. The three attackers were killed in the immediate exchange of fire that followed the attack.
to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Four Nahal Brigade soldiers on patrol, accompanied by Border Police jeeps were heading out of the narrow alley after patrol that area. In addition, two additional Nahal soldiers were positioned in an observation post located nearby and several more IDF soldiers were located near the exit gate of Kiryat Arba.
A group of settlers from Kiryat Arba
had visited the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron for a Sabbath eve service and were escorted back to the settlement by Israeli military. A few minutes after the all clear signal rang, signaling that all the settlers had safely returned to Kiryat Arba, the first bullets were fired.
At 6:55 pm the Palestinian militants opened fire simultaneously on a group of soldiers guarding the south gate of Kiryat Arba and a patrol passing through a narrow alley leading from the Tomb of the Patriarchs to Kiryat Arba. Two soldiers in the alley were wounded. One IDF paramedic was killed trying to evacuate the wounded.
Minutes later Border Police Superintendent Samih Sweidan arrived at the scene and drove immediately into the alley to engage the Palestinian millitants and evacuate the wounded. He and his driver were shot to death, apparently at point-blank range, as they stepped out of their jeep. Meanwhile one of the wounded trapped in the alley died of his wounds. The attack had hardly lasted five minutes and already four Israeli soldiers were dead. A few minutes later a fifth soldier was shot and killed. The killed and wounded soldiers remained in the exposed alley.
Around 7:15 pm the Palestinian militants ceased fire, creating the impression that they had run away. At this time the commander of the IDF Hebron Brigade, Colonel Dror Weinberg arrived at the scene. He quickly organized a force of three jeeps and entered the alley. When Weinberg reached Sweidan’s jeep he was hit by a bullet and severely wounded. After being evacuated he died from his wounds, becoming the highest ranking Israeli casualty of the Second Intifada.
Before being hit Col. Weinberg had contacted the settler's security outfit, the Kiryat Arba Emergency Response Team. Around 7:40 pm the head of the response team, Yitzhak Buanish, entered the alley together with a force consisting of Buanish own men and Border Police soldiers. As in the previous rescue attempts, they were ambushed. Buanish and two of his colleagues were killed and another five wounded. Two Border Police officers were also killed in the incident. Probably the first Palestinian fighter was killed in this incident.
At 7:50 pm the IDF entered the alley with armored personal carriers and started engaging the Palestinians. Firing continued until 8:15 pm when the Palestinians stopped firing back and the dead and wounded soldiers could be evacuated. But fighting flared up again.
Control over the situation was gradually restored with the arrival of reinforcements and commanding officers. Lieutenant Colonel Eran, head of the Nahal Brigade in Hebron, and soldiers from the Duvdevan elite unit, rushed to Hebron from Ramallah, outflanked the two remaining gunmen and killed them. That was close to 11:30 pm, more than four hours after the attack started.
earlier in the week as well as “other crimes against our people”.
The three militants were all in their early 20’s and enrolled as engineering students at the Hebron Polytechnic
. According to Palestinian sources they had prepared the ambush for more than two months, scouting the area of the attack thoroughly and especially studying Israeli security arrangements along the road between the Ibrahimi mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) and Kiryat Arba. The operation was planned as a martyrdom operation and the participants had written their customary wills.
Fatalities among Palestinian Jerusalem Brigades militants
, who dubbed the ambush in Hebron the "Sabbath massacre":
The MFA terminology was quickly taken up by international media as well as world leaders. CNN repeated the term "Sabbath massacre" on its website headline and claimed that Palestinian militants "ambushed a group of Israeli Jews on their way home from prayer services".
The US Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned in the strongest possible terms "the shocking and reprehensible attack on Jewish worshipers... gunned down on the way back from Sabbath prayer". The Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
condemned "the despicable terrorist attack... that today killed 10 Jewish worshippers on their way to the Sabbath eve prayers"... [a] terrorist act against Israeli civilians". ”
The true nature of the battle became clear when the identities of the victims were made public. The Israeli daily Haaretz
noted only two days after the attack that “The Foreign Ministry's successful "spin" on the Islamic Jihad attack in Hebron… lasted only a few hours.” It was not a massacre, Haaretz claimed, and the Israeli victims were not "peaceful Jewish worshippers" but “armed fighters” who were killed in combat.
Chicago Tribune
initially reported that the Palestinian ambush had targeted both settlers and soldiers. On the following day it published a retraction, with the headline “Gunmen targeted troops, not settlers”. The Christian Science Monitor
wrote a few days after the incident that “[a]s details about the clash filter out, it seems less like a "Sabbath massacre," as it was described initially, and more like a military failure for the Israelis”. Matan Vilnai
a former general and a leading Labour Party politician said that "[i]t wasn't a massacre, it was a battle."
The Swedish Journalist Union’s magazine "Journalisten" complained that Swedish newspapers did not publish corrections when early official versions of violent incidents in Israel failed to mention that the Israeli victims were soldiers. The magazine mentions four such incidents during 2002-03, including the Hebron ambush.
All the Israeli casualties were in fact combatants. The Palestinian fighters only targeted IDF and Border Police patrols in the area and not the settlers returning from Sabbath service. The attack was initiated only after all the settlers had safely returned to Kiryat Arba. The only settlers who fell victims to the ambush were armed members of the Kiryat Arba Emergency Response Team who rushed to the aid of the ambushed soldiers. The three Response Team members were accorded military ceremony funerals "due to their involvement in Hevron security".
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
told IDF commanders in Hebron two days after the incident that "the opportunity that now presents itself in the wake of the attack... must be exploited to establish new facts on the ground" by creating a "territorial continuity between the settlement of Kiryat Arba and the Jewish section of Hebron". Sharon also told the officers that "the army must create a situation that will ensure the safety of the Jews living in the divided city, and reduce to a minimum the presence of Palestinians in the area in which the settlers live."
The mayor of Kiryat Arba, Zvi Katsover, called on the government to "clean up the area" by destroying hundreds of Palestinian homes along a road connecting Hebron and his settlement. In November 2002 an 8.2 dunam
large area in Hebron was expropriated by the Israel Defense Forces, covering a 6 to 12 meter wide corridor linking the Jewish settlement in Hebron with Kiryat Arba. The area consists of 22 Palestinian-owned buildings of architectural and historical value in the Old City that the army intended to demolish. The military order was appealed to the High Court of Justice and it’s unclear whether or when it was actually carried out. The petition was rejected by the High Court after the IDF declared that they intended to demolish only two of the houses. In February 2003 another 22 Palestinian buildings in the same area of Hebron were destroyed by IDF, in what Haaretz labeled as “likely part of the IDF's ongoing retaliation campaign in the city”.
In the site where the battle took place the "Giborim outpost" (מאחז הגיבורים) was constructed which originally included a small number of temporary structures and tents housed by the number of young people and families who demanded to build a neighborhood in the site in memory of the fallen. 30 days after the incident the outpost was evacuated by the Israel military forces. Since then the area has been declared as a 'closed military area' by the local IDF commander.
Following the attack the Israeli Chief of Staff posthumously granted the Chief of Staff Medal of Appreciation
to Yitzhak Buanish, Alexander Zwitman and Alexander Dohan - the Kiryat Arba
Emergency Response Team, as well as to Elijah Liebman, the chief of security of the Jewish community in Hebron
. After his death, Sgt. Gad Rahamim was granted the Medal of Courage
for his part in the battle.
Israel has repeatedly claimed to have killed or captured the people behind the lethal ambush in Hebron. In August 2003 Muhammed Sidr, described as the head of Islamic Jihad in Hebron, was killed in an arrest operation in Hebron. The Hebron ambush was claimed to have been carried out “under Sidr's guidance”.
A month later Majid Abu Dosh was killed in similar circumstances outside Hebron. According to Haaretz Abu Dosh was “considered the "operations officer" of Islamic Jihad in the Hebron area, and the right-hand man of Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed Sidr, who was killed by the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit in August. Abu-Dosh is said to have planned the attack on Worshipers' Way in Hebron.”
In December 2003 Nour Jaber, also described as the head of the Islamic Jihad movement in Hebron, was sentenced to 17 life sentences for his role in planning the Hebron ambush operation as well as another attack on the Hesder
yeshiva (military religious academy) of Otniel, where two IDF soldiers and two teenage yeshiva students were killed.
Palestinian sources confirm that Jaber was indeed actively involved in the planning of the ambush. A web page connected to Islamic Jihad celebrating the attackers mentions, apart from the three dead, only Jaber's role in the attack and described him as "the planner" of the operation. No mention was made of the others' eventual contribution to planning or execution of the attack.
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
in the West Bank on November 15, 2002. Israeli forces were subjected to a series of ambushes by fighters from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Twelve Israeli combatants, including three officers, were killed in the battle, as were three of the Palestinian attackers. The battle was referred to in Israel as "The attack in the worshipers route",. In Arabic the attack became known as the Battle of Wadi an-Nasara (the Valley of the Christians), "Ma’rakat Wadi an-Nasara”, after the place where the battle took place. The place where the attack took place became known as the "Alley of Death" both in Hebrew and Arabic. The ambush was initially dubbed as the "Sabbath massacre" by official Israeli spokespersons.
The attacks were carried out simultaneously in a narrow alley which was used as a passage from Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000...
to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and at the south gate of Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000...
. During the ambushes, 12 Israelis were killed (five border policemen, four IDF soldiers and three members of the Kiryat Arba Emergency Response Team) and 14 Israeli combatants were injured. Among those killed were three high-ranking Israeli officers. The three attackers were killed in the immediate exchange of fire that followed the attack.
Locations of the various forces prior to the attack
One of the militants positioned himself near the front of the exit gate of Kiryat Arba towards Hebron. The remaining two militants positioned themselves near the a narrow alley which was used as a passage by all Jewish worshipers heading from Kiryat ArbaKiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000...
to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Four Nahal Brigade soldiers on patrol, accompanied by Border Police jeeps were heading out of the narrow alley after patrol that area. In addition, two additional Nahal soldiers were positioned in an observation post located nearby and several more IDF soldiers were located near the exit gate of Kiryat Arba.
The attack
The Palestinian militants moved positions frequently during the more than 4 hours of fighting creating the impression that many more militants were involved.A group of settlers from Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000...
had visited the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron for a Sabbath eve service and were escorted back to the settlement by Israeli military. A few minutes after the all clear signal rang, signaling that all the settlers had safely returned to Kiryat Arba, the first bullets were fired.
At 6:55 pm the Palestinian militants opened fire simultaneously on a group of soldiers guarding the south gate of Kiryat Arba and a patrol passing through a narrow alley leading from the Tomb of the Patriarchs to Kiryat Arba. Two soldiers in the alley were wounded. One IDF paramedic was killed trying to evacuate the wounded.
Minutes later Border Police Superintendent Samih Sweidan arrived at the scene and drove immediately into the alley to engage the Palestinian millitants and evacuate the wounded. He and his driver were shot to death, apparently at point-blank range, as they stepped out of their jeep. Meanwhile one of the wounded trapped in the alley died of his wounds. The attack had hardly lasted five minutes and already four Israeli soldiers were dead. A few minutes later a fifth soldier was shot and killed. The killed and wounded soldiers remained in the exposed alley.
Around 7:15 pm the Palestinian militants ceased fire, creating the impression that they had run away. At this time the commander of the IDF Hebron Brigade, Colonel Dror Weinberg arrived at the scene. He quickly organized a force of three jeeps and entered the alley. When Weinberg reached Sweidan’s jeep he was hit by a bullet and severely wounded. After being evacuated he died from his wounds, becoming the highest ranking Israeli casualty of the Second Intifada.
Before being hit Col. Weinberg had contacted the settler's security outfit, the Kiryat Arba Emergency Response Team. Around 7:40 pm the head of the response team, Yitzhak Buanish, entered the alley together with a force consisting of Buanish own men and Border Police soldiers. As in the previous rescue attempts, they were ambushed. Buanish and two of his colleagues were killed and another five wounded. Two Border Police officers were also killed in the incident. Probably the first Palestinian fighter was killed in this incident.
At 7:50 pm the IDF entered the alley with armored personal carriers and started engaging the Palestinians. Firing continued until 8:15 pm when the Palestinians stopped firing back and the dead and wounded soldiers could be evacuated. But fighting flared up again.
Control over the situation was gradually restored with the arrival of reinforcements and commanding officers. Lieutenant Colonel Eran, head of the Nahal Brigade in Hebron, and soldiers from the Duvdevan elite unit, rushed to Hebron from Ramallah, outflanked the two remaining gunmen and killed them. That was close to 11:30 pm, more than four hours after the attack started.
Victims
Israeli Military forces
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Israeli Border Police forces
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Israeli civilian combatants Kiryat Arba Kiryat Arba Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000... Emergency Response Team:
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The attackers
The attack was carried out by three members of the Jerusalem Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine. According to a statement by the Jerusalem Brigades the attack was intended as a revenge for the killing of the regional Islamic Jihad leader Iyad Sawalha in JeninJenin
Jenin is the largest town in the Northern West Bank, and the third largest city overall. It serves as the administrative center of the Jenin Governorate and is a major agricultural center for the surrounding towns. In 2007, the city had a population of 120,004 not including the adjacent refugee...
earlier in the week as well as “other crimes against our people”.
The three militants were all in their early 20’s and enrolled as engineering students at the Hebron Polytechnic
Palestine Polytechnic University
Palestine Polytechnic University is a university located in Hebron, West Bank, Palestine.The school was founded in 1978 by the University Graduates Union , a non-profit organization in Hebron.Enrolment in 2007 was greater than 5000 students....
. According to Palestinian sources they had prepared the ambush for more than two months, scouting the area of the attack thoroughly and especially studying Israeli security arrangements along the road between the Ibrahimi mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) and Kiryat Arba. The operation was planned as a martyrdom operation and the participants had written their customary wills.
Fatalities among Palestinian Jerusalem Brigades militants
- Akram 'Abd al-Muhsen al-Hinuni, 20, of HebronHebronHebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
- Walaa’ Hashim Da’ud Surour, 21, of HebronHebronHebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
- Dhiyab Muhammad ‘Abd al-Mu’ti al-Muhtasib, 22, of HebronHebronHebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
The Massacre allegations
It was Gilad Millo, spokesman of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign AffairsMinistry of Foreign Affairs (Israel)
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is one of the most important ministries in the Israeli government. The ministry's role is to implement Israel's foreign policy, and promote economic, cultural, and scientific relations with other countries....
, who dubbed the ambush in Hebron the "Sabbath massacre":
"This sabbath massacre is the second time in a week that innocent civilians have been senselessly murdered either in their beds or on their way to prayers. No political process can take root while these atrocities continue to be carried out by terrorists."
The MFA terminology was quickly taken up by international media as well as world leaders. CNN repeated the term "Sabbath massacre" on its website headline and claimed that Palestinian militants "ambushed a group of Israeli Jews on their way home from prayer services".
The US Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned in the strongest possible terms "the shocking and reprehensible attack on Jewish worshipers... gunned down on the way back from Sabbath prayer". The Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
condemned "the despicable terrorist attack... that today killed 10 Jewish worshippers on their way to the Sabbath eve prayers"... [a] terrorist act against Israeli civilians". ”
The true nature of the battle became clear when the identities of the victims were made public. The Israeli daily Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
noted only two days after the attack that “The Foreign Ministry's successful "spin" on the Islamic Jihad attack in Hebron… lasted only a few hours.” It was not a massacre, Haaretz claimed, and the Israeli victims were not "peaceful Jewish worshippers" but “armed fighters” who were killed in combat.
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
initially reported that the Palestinian ambush had targeted both settlers and soldiers. On the following day it published a retraction, with the headline “Gunmen targeted troops, not settlers”. The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
wrote a few days after the incident that “[a]s details about the clash filter out, it seems less like a "Sabbath massacre," as it was described initially, and more like a military failure for the Israelis”. Matan Vilnai
Matan Vilnai
Matan Vilnai is an Israeli politician and a former Major General in the Israel Defense Forces . He is currently Minister for Home Front Defense and a member of the Knesset for Independence.-Biography:...
a former general and a leading Labour Party politician said that "[i]t wasn't a massacre, it was a battle."
The Swedish Journalist Union’s magazine "Journalisten" complained that Swedish newspapers did not publish corrections when early official versions of violent incidents in Israel failed to mention that the Israeli victims were soldiers. The magazine mentions four such incidents during 2002-03, including the Hebron ambush.
All the Israeli casualties were in fact combatants. The Palestinian fighters only targeted IDF and Border Police patrols in the area and not the settlers returning from Sabbath service. The attack was initiated only after all the settlers had safely returned to Kiryat Arba. The only settlers who fell victims to the ambush were armed members of the Kiryat Arba Emergency Response Team who rushed to the aid of the ambushed soldiers. The three Response Team members were accorded military ceremony funerals "due to their involvement in Hevron security".
The Israeli response
The Palestinian-administered part of Hebron was quickly re-occupied by Israeli forces and a curfew was declared throughout the city. The curfew remained in force for more than six months. Scores of young Palestinians were arrested. Four Palestinian houses were demolished by the IDF.Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
told IDF commanders in Hebron two days after the incident that "the opportunity that now presents itself in the wake of the attack... must be exploited to establish new facts on the ground" by creating a "territorial continuity between the settlement of Kiryat Arba and the Jewish section of Hebron". Sharon also told the officers that "the army must create a situation that will ensure the safety of the Jews living in the divided city, and reduce to a minimum the presence of Palestinians in the area in which the settlers live."
The mayor of Kiryat Arba, Zvi Katsover, called on the government to "clean up the area" by destroying hundreds of Palestinian homes along a road connecting Hebron and his settlement. In November 2002 an 8.2 dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
large area in Hebron was expropriated by the Israel Defense Forces, covering a 6 to 12 meter wide corridor linking the Jewish settlement in Hebron with Kiryat Arba. The area consists of 22 Palestinian-owned buildings of architectural and historical value in the Old City that the army intended to demolish. The military order was appealed to the High Court of Justice and it’s unclear whether or when it was actually carried out. The petition was rejected by the High Court after the IDF declared that they intended to demolish only two of the houses. In February 2003 another 22 Palestinian buildings in the same area of Hebron were destroyed by IDF, in what Haaretz labeled as “likely part of the IDF's ongoing retaliation campaign in the city”.
Subsequent related events
The IDF conduct during the Hebron ambush was exposed to a lot of bitter criticism. Many settlers blamed the death of the three Kiryat Arba security men on the "cowardice" of IDF soldiers. Three Israeli officers were dismissed from their posts in December 2002 for their personal failures in the Hebron ambush. The death of several high-ranking officers created a "command vacuum" that the remaining officers proved unable to fill, creating "a situation in which the decision-making fell into the hands of civilians (local settlers)". "When civilians command the army - this is not an acceptable situation as far as we are concerned."In the site where the battle took place the "Giborim outpost" (מאחז הגיבורים) was constructed which originally included a small number of temporary structures and tents housed by the number of young people and families who demanded to build a neighborhood in the site in memory of the fallen. 30 days after the incident the outpost was evacuated by the Israel military forces. Since then the area has been declared as a 'closed military area' by the local IDF commander.
Following the attack the Israeli Chief of Staff posthumously granted the Chief of Staff Medal of Appreciation
Chief Of Staff Medal of Appreciation
The Chief Of Staff Medal of Appreciation is an Israeli military decoration.The medal was instituted in 1981. It is awarded to both civilians and military personnel who contribute to the strengthening of the IDF or the security of Israel; the medal could also be awarded to foreign civilians.The...
to Yitzhak Buanish, Alexander Zwitman and Alexander Dohan - the Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba , lit. "Town of the Four," is an Israeli settlement in the Judean Mountains region of the West Bank on the edge of Hebron. Its settlers consist of a mix of Russian immigrants, American immigrants, and native-born Israelis numbering close to 10,000...
Emergency Response Team, as well as to Elijah Liebman, the chief of security of the Jewish community in Hebron
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
. After his death, Sgt. Gad Rahamim was granted the Medal of Courage
Medal of Courage
The Medal of Courage is an Israeli military decoration. The medal is awarded for carrying out acts of gallantry at the risk of life, during combat duty. The medal was established in 1970 by act of law in the Knesset....
for his part in the battle.
Israel has repeatedly claimed to have killed or captured the people behind the lethal ambush in Hebron. In August 2003 Muhammed Sidr, described as the head of Islamic Jihad in Hebron, was killed in an arrest operation in Hebron. The Hebron ambush was claimed to have been carried out “under Sidr's guidance”.
A month later Majid Abu Dosh was killed in similar circumstances outside Hebron. According to Haaretz Abu Dosh was “considered the "operations officer" of Islamic Jihad in the Hebron area, and the right-hand man of Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed Sidr, who was killed by the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit in August. Abu-Dosh is said to have planned the attack on Worshipers' Way in Hebron.”
In December 2003 Nour Jaber, also described as the head of the Islamic Jihad movement in Hebron, was sentenced to 17 life sentences for his role in planning the Hebron ambush operation as well as another attack on the Hesder
Hesder
Hesder is an Israeli yeshiva program which combines advanced Talmudic studies with military service in the Israel Defense Forces, usually within a Religious Zionist framework...
yeshiva (military religious academy) of Otniel, where two IDF soldiers and two teenage yeshiva students were killed.
Palestinian sources confirm that Jaber was indeed actively involved in the planning of the ambush. A web page connected to Islamic Jihad celebrating the attackers mentions, apart from the three dead, only Jaber's role in the attack and described him as "the planner" of the operation. No mention was made of the others' eventual contribution to planning or execution of the attack.
External links
- Palestinian Attack Kills Jewish Worshipers in Hebron - published on NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
on November 15, 2002 - Hebron settlers die in gun attack - published on BBC NewsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
on November 15, 2002 - Israelis arrest 41 in Hebron after Palestinian ambush - published on CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
on November 15, 2002 - 12 Israelis killed in Hebron ambush near prayer site - published on The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
on November 15, 2002 - 12 Israelis Killed in Sabbath Eve attack in Hebron - published at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs