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On
October 29, the Israeli army brutally massacred about 100 women and
children, precipitating a massive flight of people from that village
on the western side of the Hebron mountains. Mr. Walid Khalidi,
author of All That Remains, says that the Palestinian
inhabitants at Dawayma faced one of the larger Israeli massacres,
though today it is among the least well-known.
The
following are excerpts of a description of the massacre published in
the Israeli daily ‘Al ha Mishmar, quoted in All That Remains:
The
children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was
not a house without dead…one commander ordered a sapper to put two
old women in a certain house…and to blow up the house with them. The
sapper refused…the commander then ordered his men to put in the old
women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had
raped a woman and then shot her…
A
former mukhtar (head of a village) of Dawayma interviewed in 1984 by
the Israeli daily Hadashot, also quoted by Mr. Khalidi, offered
another description:
The
people fled, and everyone they saw in the houses, they shot and
killed. They also killed people in the streets. They came and blew
up my house, in the presence of eye-witnesses…the moment that the
tanks came and opened fire, I left the village immediately. At about
half-past ten, two tanks passed the Darawish Mosque. About 75 old
people were there, who had come early for Friday prayers. They
gathered in the mosque to pray. They were all killed.
About
35 families had been hiding in caves outside Dawayma, according to
the mukhtar, and when the Israeli forces discovered them they were
told to come out, line up, and begin walking. “And as they started
to walk, they were shot by machine guns from two sides…we sent
people there that night, who collected the bodies, put them into a
cistern, and buried them,” the mukhtar told the Israeli daily.
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