At Least 11 Israelis Killed in West Bank Ambush

Friday, November 15, 2002

HEBRON, West Bank — At least 11 Israelis were killed and about 20 others were wounded Friday when Palestinian militants opened fire on Jewish worshippers as they walked toward a disputed shrine after sundown.

A high-level Israeli military official was among the dead.

The settlers and soldiers came under fire as they wound their way into the West Bank city of Hebron to mark the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine revered by Muslims and Jews.

The militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the shooting attack, Israeli TV reported.

Mohammed Al Hindi, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, would not confirm the claim, but said that "our Jihad will continue until either victory or martyrdom."

An army official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the group had been caught in a well-planned ambush after the start of the Sabbath. Exchanges of fire were continuing in the area, he said.

Israeli media reported that soldiers attempting to assist civilians under fire were caught in an ambush that included sniper fire from the hilltop suburb of Abu Sneineh.

The Israeli Cabinet was expected to hold an emergency session, possibly even on the Sabbath, due to the severity of the attack

Most of Hebron is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but the Israeli army patrols the center of the city, where about 450 Jewish settlers live in three enclaves, surrounded by 130,000 Palestinians. The 30,000 Palestinians living near the enclaves are also under Israeli control and are subjected to frequent curfews.

Hebron had been quiet in recent weeks, and Israeli troops had withdrawn from most of the Palestinian-controlled sector of the city.

Nearly all the Jews in Hebron and many living in the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba walk to the Tomb of the Patriarchs every Friday evening, and the route is heavily guarded by Israeli security forces. The site is the burial place of the biblical Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who are revered by both faiths.

Both Israelis and Palestinians draw on past suffering to fuel their current grievances in the city, 25 miles south of Jerusalem.

After living in Hebron for centuries, Jews were driven out during Arab riots in 1929. Dozens were massacred.

When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, settlers began moving back into what had been Hebron's Jewish quarter. Kiryat Arba, one of the West Bank's largest settlements, was established in 1972, and is home to thousands of Israelis today.

Relations with Palestinians, rarely friendly, deteriorated sharply in 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a New York-born settler who lived in Kiryat Arba, gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers inside the mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. He was beaten to death by the survivors.

That massacre led to calls within Israel -- where many people oppose the Hebron settlement and the high price of defending it -- that the settlers to be evacuated. The settlers, among the most ideological in the West Bank, have also had an occasionally rocky relationship with the Israeli soldiers defending them.

Quoted:
But then there was this:


Which I took to mean that the local QRF got ambushed as it tried to go to the rescue.

Its classic, happened all the time in Vietnam.

And also, you must remember the settlers there are nearly always armed and most are IDF reservists.