The First Three Women Victims of Sharon

Azmi Bishara     Al-Hayat     2003/07/24

Safia Mohammad Mahmoud Shamasna, Amina Isa Abdulhalim Al Fakih, Halima Hasan Ahmad Taha, from the village of Qatana in North Western Jerusalem, were gunned down by an ambush as they were on their way to the village water well. Their names were never published, and people never got to know that the person who gave the order to shoot them 50 years ago was Major Ariel Sharon.

Between 1952 and 1953, Sharon almost became a student, busy with his studies, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, when he was appointed head of an airborne Brigade. A few days later, he gathered his officers and told them that Arab women from the Arab village of Qatana had been crossing the borders during their trip from their village to the well. And in order to correct that "mistake," he wanted to ambush the women and shoot them. The scenario was carried out as planned by Sharon.

This was carried out before the establishment of the 101 brigade in August 1953, which was led by Sharon. The brigade was created as a special unit with a mission to carry out retribution attacks against Palestinians villages alongside the borders with Jordan, as well as against civilian targets in Gaza and along the ceasefire lines with Syria.

The first attacks carried out by that brigade were storming the Bureij refugee camp during the night of August 28-29. The attackers killed 43 Palestinian refugees, including seven women, while 22 were wounded. The Israeli forces suffered two wounded. Sharon himself led the operation.

On October 13, 1953, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion met with Yitzhak Lavon, (the minister of security), and Moshe Dayan, (head of operations in the office of the chief of staff), in order to discuss retaliation for an attack by a Palestinian who had killed a Jewish woman and her son in a grenade attack.

The three men decided to carry out attacks against the villages of Naalein, Shikba, with the aim of destroying a number of houses. The other and main objective was to attack the village of Kibya. Sharon interpreted the order as to attack Kibya and kill as many as possible of its inhabitants and to destroy property, as well as to attack the villages of Shikba and Naalein with the objective of killing and destroying a number of the houses.

The operation was carried out on the night of October 15. The force that carried out the attack brought with it 700 kilos of explosives. Fifty-four houses were demolished within three hours, and 70 villagers were killed. Most of the dead were women and children, some of whom perished beneath the rubble of their homes.

The operation created an international uproar, which forced the Israeli government to issue a declaration claiming that the assault was carried out in retaliation for attacks against Israel that had come across the borders of Jordan and other Arab countries over the past four years. The declaration claimed that such attacks had cost the lives of many Jewish civilians. Israel even denied that 600 of its soldiers had carried out the operation.

The declaration raised some doubts in the West. Anglo-Saxon diplomats found it hard to believe that the prime minister of Israel could undermine his credibility by publishing lies.

But that is the Machiavellian school that aims at showing Israel as strong, and making the Arabs aware of the high price they pay for attacking Israel, and then justifies the best means to attain its objective by sheer lying.

Other operations were carried out after the integration of unit 101 with unit 890 of the airborne brigades under the command of Sharon. On March 29, 1954, four Palestinian refugees were executed after being taken from their homes in the village of Naheline. And on May 26, with their hand tied in their backs, they were executed.

In addition to Sharon, the main start of the operations was Meir Hartison. Hartison's sister had been killed with her boy friend as they wondered into Jordanian territories. Three weeks later, in response to their killing, Hartison and three paratroopers crossed the borders in to Jordan and killed a Bedouin who tried to escape. They captured five more and killed four of them by slitting their throats. The fifth was allowed return to the village to describe the horrors he saw.

Ben Gurion claimed that he was angered by the operation. But nothing was done to prosecute the killers. When they were being investigated, they maintained their silence "under orders from Erik." Sharon had ordered them not to cooperate with the police, as Moshe Sharett wrote in his diaries.

Last June 22, Sharon told the Jewish settlers: Build quietly. There is no need to dance every time permission is granted to build a new settlement.