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Palestinian Sniper Kills Israeli Baby in Hebron

March 27, 2001

A ten-month-old Israeli girl was killed yesterday when a Palestinian sniper opened fire at the Jewish community in Hebron. The baby, Shalhevet Pass, was shot in the head as she sat in a stroller pushed by her father, Yitzhak Pass, who was wounded in the leg.

Pass, his wife, and daughter had just entered the playground in the Avraham Avinu enclave when the shots were fired. Witnesses said the shots were carefully aimed and not a random spray of bullets.

After the shooting, the army warned all Palestinians to leave the Abu Sneineh area of Hebron, from where the shots were fired. Israeli troops then fired tank shells at the neighborhood. Seven Palestinians were wounded.

Jewish residents of Hebron demanded that the army retake Abu Sneineh. The parents of the victim said they would not bury the child until Abu Sneineh is back under Israeli control. Jewish law requires quick burial, but the parents said they obtained rabbinical approval for their decision.

The Palestinian Authority failed to condemn the killing. "What is happening in Hebron is the continuation of the occupation and settlement," said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to Arafat. "We put responsibility for the killing of the baby on Sharon's government."

Hebron, a West Bank city southwest of Jerusalem, is the burial site of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Hebron was also King David’s first capitol before the capitol was established at Jerusalem. Although many of the Jewish residents of Israel were driven out by the Romans following the Jewish rebellions in 67 AD and 135 AD, Jews remained in Hebron until 1929 when the Jewish population was massacred by the local Arabs.

In Israel’s War of Independence in 1968, Jordan captured the region today known as the West Bank and destroyed the 450 year-old Avraham Avinu synagogue. Jewish settlers returned to Hebron after Israel recaptured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967. However, the majority of Hebron’s population remained Arab, and, in 1998, control of the city was turned over to Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo accords. Israel, however, retained control of the Jewish enclave in the city.

Hebron and other Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been flashpoints for violence during the current Arab uprising. Most of the deaths in the uprising have resulted when Arab mobs attacked the settlements in hope of provoking a violent response from the Israeli soldiers who guard the communities.

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