More details on yesterday’s massacre of the five members of the
Hatuel family are now known. The murderers diverted the soldiers’ attention – but
quick thinking by a CNN crew prevented a larger massacre.

More details on yesterday’s massacre of the five members of the Hatuel family
are now known. Two terrorists from Dir el-Balah, the Arab village closest to
Kfar Darom and the Kisufim route to Gush Katif, lay in wait around noon for
Jewish cars to arrive. They then opened fire with their Kalachnikov rifles on
the cars passing by – the first of which were two armored vans belonging to a
CNN news team. No one was hurt, but producer Mike Schwartz realized that a
terrorist attack was in progress, and instructed the cars to drive forward and then
park in the middle of the road. He thus prevented additional cars from
falling into the ambush trap.

Though Schwartz heroically saved the lives of those in some ten cars behind
him, he couldn’t help the Hatuel family, who was already on its way into the
trap. The terrorists shot at the car carrying the mother and her four daughters,
and when the vehicle veered off the side of the road, the terrorists
performed “ascertainment of death:” they ran over to the car and, at point-blank
range, shot each of the occupants to death: Tali, the 8-month pregnant mother, and
Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav. The murderers then
continued to unload dozens of more bullets into the bodies. Zaka volunteers worked
for a long while afterwards to collect the body parts from the car and its
vicinity.

It is possible that the terrorists evaded detection by first shooting at
nearby IDF outposts, thus causing the surveillance cameras to be momentarily
directed away from the road. The murderers took advantage of the moment to run up
to the road and take up their positions. In addition to shooting at the cars,
the murderers also threw a small bomb at the vehicles. IDF forces who did
arrive on the scene shot and killed the two terrorists. Two lightly-wounded
soldiers and one moderately-wounded civilian were flown to Soroka Hospital in Be’er
Sheva.

Hamas, one of the terrorist groups that took responsibility for the attack,
said afterwards that just as the Jews of Gush Katif are about to be expelled
from their homes because of the Arab resistance, so too will all the Jews of
Judea and Samaria be expelled from their homes. Other Hamas figures have said in
the past that their goal is to uproot and destroy the entire State of Israel.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who arrived at the scene of the
attack this morning, made it plain where he places the blame: The Supreme Court.
He said that lining the Kisufim Route are “houses that, for security reason,
we wanted to remove, and pay the occupants compensation. But the legal system
did not allow us to do this.” The homes served as camouflage for the terrorists
and their actions. As of last night, however, this is no longer true: the
army did not ask anyone and destroyed 13 houses in the region, as well as three
more in the Rafiach area. Four of these were houses that the Court previously
ruled could not be destroyed, and two of them were houses that helped hide
yesterday’s terrorists.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2004 and is filed under hotnews.