1980 Hebron terrorist attack

On May 2, 1980, six Israeli citizens were killed and 20 injured at 7:30 pm on a Friday as they returned home from prayer services on the Sabbath in Hebron. They were attacked from behind with gunfire and grenades from the rooftops around a small alley.

It was the most deadly attack on Israeli occupied West Bank since the Six-Day War.

The attack, unprecedented in the post-1967 period, was understood to mark a tradition from "hit-and-run" attacks to attacks aiming to achieve mass casualties by the use of military tactics and careful planning.

The attack was carefully planned in military style. The terrorists had studied the route and timing of the return of worshipers to the Jewish residence in the former Hadassah medical clinic on Friday evenings, and attacked from street level and rooftop as soon as the Jews appeared in the narrow passageway. Terrorist Adnan Jabar was posted on the roof of a building opposite the Hadassah medical clinic holding a Kalashnikov with which he "opened fire" as soon as the Jewish pedestrians came into view. Israeli guards at the former clinic immediately returned fire. Perpetrators admitted to having received instrucitons directly from Khalil al-Wazir.

An extensive cache of explosives and weapons was discovered, it included the guns used in the attack.

In September 1980, four members of Al Fatah were arrested and charged with carrying out the attack. One of the four had trained in the USSR. two were arrested while trying to cross from Israel into Jordan.

An additional six Arab Palestinians six Palestinians were taken into custody, charged with aiding the terrorists by providing lodging and transportation.

All of the terrorists were members of Fatah.

The attack prompted the government of Menachem Begin to refurbish the Hadassah medical clinic and to permit Jews to live in the Beit Hason and Beit Schneerson buildings adjacent to it.

The Israeli community of Beit Hagai (House of Haggai) was established in 1982 by former classmates of boys murdered in this attack. In addition to being the name of a Biblical Prophet, Haggai, is an acronym of the given names Hanan Krauthammer, Gershon Klein, and Yaakov Zimmerman, the three Nir Yeshiva (Kiryat Arba) students killed in an attack on 2 May 1980.

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Wikipedia