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September 29, 2003
Baby killed in Rosh Hashana attack
By Arieh O'Sullivan
An Islamic Jihad terrorist murdered a seven-month-old baby and a 26-year-old man in the West Bank settlement of Negohot on Friday night, opening fire on a home filled with people sharing a Rosh Hashana meal.
The gunman shot dead Shaked Avraham in her rocker, as well as Otniel Yeshiva graduate Eyal Yerberbaum. Married couple Nehemia and Dorit Krakover were lightly wounded in the shooting.
It was the first terrorist attack since the double-suicide bombing on September 9, and also the first since the cabinet’s September 11 decision to "remove" Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, but no high-level meeting has been planned to consider implementing the decision as a result of the attack.
One senior diplomatic official said the Rosh Hashana attack was an attempt by Islamic Jihad to show it is still "alive and well" despite the battering it has taken by the IDF in recent weeks. The official said the attack, coming on the eve of the establishment of a new PA cabinet, doesn’t bode well for the future.
"One would expect that a new government, at least while it is in the process of being formed, would try to stop attacks,‘ he said. ’If this government is a puppet government for Arafat, then we are likely to see more of these attacks."
While Islamic Jihad did not officially accept responsibility for the attack, the terrorist, Mahmoud Hamdan, 22, was a known member of Islamic Jihad from a tiny village near Dura in the Hebron hills. He had reportedly been released from prison two months ago, after serving 14 months. The attack came a day after troops killed two Islamic Jihad leaders in their Hebron hideout.
Searches went on for a second gunman, and were only called off at midday Saturday when the army declared that Hamdan had acted alone.
Hamdan planned the attack for the holiday eve; doing so has become a favorite time for terrorists to strike, particularly in the Hebron hills area. According to Maj. Haim, deputy commander of the reserve battalion which supplied forces to guard the settlement, the terrorist sneaked into Negohot from a wadi to its west.
Wearing dark trousers, a jeans shirt, and a vest, Hamdan first came to a caravan and knocked on the door. Eating their Rosh Hashana dinner inside were a number of young couples, students, and a reserve soldier named Hanoch who described what happened next.
"We asked, ’Who is it?’ and no one answered," Maj. Haim quoted Hanoch as saying.
"[Hamdan] knocked again, and again we asked who it was. The third time he muttered something. One of the men went to the door with a pistol drawn and opened it slightly, and caught two bullets. He fell down seriously wounded, but managed to shut the door with his last strength."
The soldier, whose own weapon was not on him at the time, grabbed an Uzi that belonged to another person. But that gun jammed. He then ran for his own weapon and started shooting outside. The terrorist continued to fire bursts at the caravan, riddling it with gunfire. One of the bullets hit seven-month-old Shaked in the chest, killing her almost instantly.
Hamdan, who had four ammunition clips and a number of hand grenades, also fired on three other caravans. In one of them was a family with three children celebrating the holiday, but no one was hurt.
Maj. Haim said he had just completed briefing his soldiers when the shooting started around 9:10 p. m. He said they sprinted toward the source of the gunfire.
"One of the soldiers who was already there shot at the terrorist, but lost track of him," the commander recalled.
The reservists searching for the terrorists saw him again but thought he was a settler since he was dressed in civilian clothes and had an M-16 with a telescopic sight, similar to those commonly used by settlers. They warned him to get down. Instead he opened fire at them. According to some reports, he shouted, "Allahu Akbar" (God is great).
"We all returned fire and the terrorist fell. We were a few dozen meters from him. We all charged toward him and made sure he no longer presented a threat. I then immediately rushed toward the house he had attacked," Maj. Haim told Israel Radio. He said the father had tried to shield his infant daughter from the gunfire with his body but was too late. An army medic rushed to treat the infant, but her wounds were mortal. Yerberbaum also died at the scene.
The whole incident took about two minutes from beginning to end.
Maj. Haim said the soldiers feared another gunman may have been on the loose, so they carried out searches throughout the settlement and gathered the residents in a safe place. Flares lit up the Friday night skies for hours as soldiers swept the hills around the settlement, southwest of Hebron. "It was only after 12 hours that we determined that no other terrorist had infiltrated the settlement," Maj. Haim said.
He said the settlement was not entirely fenced in and the terrorist had climbed up to Negohot from a wadi in the west. He was apparently quiet enough not to be detected.
The residents of Negohot had refused to erect a fence around their settlement until an attempted infiltration last March. In that case, soldiers intercepted the two gunmen and killed them. Subsequently construction was begun on a fence but it was not completed.
Negohot, a former Nahal outpost, is isolated and surrounded by numerous Arab villages including Beit Awa and Dura. It is located about 4km. from the Green Line and is home to 20 families, but there were many guests there on Friday night who had come for the Rosh Hashana weekend. Defense officials have cautioned that any security fence in the southern Judean hills would not likely include Negohot.
The attack came a day after Israel clamped a full closure on the territories for Rosh Hashana. Meanwhile, the IDF continued its crackdown on terror groups throughout the weekend. Its forces captured 25 Hamas fugitives and two Tanzim members in the Ramallah area. Six fugitives, including one armed with a pistol, were apprehend in Dura, and two fugitives apprehended in Hebron.
The army said its troops also nabbed two Islamic Jihad members in the Jenin refugee camp. One of them was identified as Fares Wahadeh, commander of Islamic Jihad in the camp.
Arrests also took place in the villages of Batir, Beit Likiya, and Katana in the Jerusalem corridor. Sporadic gunfire was reported at IDF outposts in the Gaza Strip. Soldiers returned fire and there were no reports of any injuries. The army said a mortar round was fired at the industrial zone of Gush Katif, but no damage was reported.
Regarding Arafat, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a Yediot Aharonot interview Friday that the decision to remove him essentially cancelled the promise he gave US President George W. Bush not to harm Arafat.
"Today the Americans also know that as long as that man is in the area, there is no chance of reaching an agreement. The government decision canceled out the commitment I gave."
Sharon said it is "very difficult to guarantee that if you grab and take him, he will not be harmed. In any event we will have to take American considerations into account. It is possible that their estimation that this will cause them problems in the Middle East is correct. They are mainly concerned about Iraq."
In Memoriam
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