Return to the island of broken dreams

Survivors of the 1997 shooting attack on the Island of Peace return to the scene of the massacre.

By AVNER HOFSTEIN , AMY KLEIN
Return to the island of broken dreams (photo credit: REUTERS )
Return to the island of broken dreams
(photo credit: REUTERS )
Hila and Keren Ofri, 29-year-old twin sisters born in Beit Shemesh, struggled for weeks trying to decide whether to visit the “Island of Peace” at Naharayim on the Israel-Jordan frontier.
The verdant hill is located at the edge of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov on the border. The site was established after the peace agreement between the two nations in 1994.
It was also the place where Hila and Keren’s childhood ended.
Fifteen years ago, on March 13, 1997, the sisters, then 14, were on a day trip to Naharayim with a class of 44 students from the AMIT Fuerst School in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem.
As the girls left their bus and headed towards an observation point to look across the border, Jordanian corporal Ahmed Mustafa Daqamseh opened fire from a guard tower with an M-16 automatic rifle, killing seven of the girls and wounding five – including the twins – and a teacher, in what would become known as the Naharayim Massacre.
The lives of the survivors would never be the same.
The killings also threatened to derail the fragile relationship slowly being developed between Israel and Jordan following the peace treaty concluded by King Hussein and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just three years before, in October 1994. The Island of Peace was an attempt to show the trust between the two countries, and so did not feature heavy security measures on the Israeli side, as was usual along the state’s international borders.
Hussein immediately flew to Israel, went straight to Beit Shemesh and visited the families of the seven dead girls. In a very public display of grief and apology, the Jordanian monarch held the hands of the parents, kneeled beside them in the shiva tents erected at their homes, and regained the trust of the Israeli people.
Closing the circle
This year, for the first time since the shootings, seven of the survivors revisited the site, accompanied by two of their former teachers. In the end, the Ofris decided to go.
“I am very much in favor of this trip because it’s an integral part of dealing with what happened and closing the circle,” says the twins’ mother, Shulamit Ofri.
“It is not resolved and it never will be,” says Hila, now divorced with two daughters of her own. She has become religious and lives in Safed. “I still can’t sleep at night. I leave the lights on because I’m afraid of the dark. I shiver when I hear Arabic spoken – I used to love Arabic, but now I hate it. For me, it’s the language of death. The language of my friends’ death,” she says.
Hila brought along her two young daughters. “It’s time for them to see the place that changed mommy. All they know is that mommy is still hurting on the left side, where the bullets pierced. So they know to hug me just from the right.”
Her daughters, sitting behind her in the van, nod. “We’re going up to Naharayim to be reminded of the terror attack. So people will know what happened,” says her elder daughter. “We are not afraid. When we get to the border, mommy said we can say ‘Shema Yisrael.’” Keren, also divorced, with three kids, still lives in Beit Shemesh. She recalls leaving her parents’ house that fateful morning feeling afraid. “I remember crossing the street, taking one last look at my house and saying goodbye, feeling as if I was never coming back,” she says.
As the bus winds its way up north, Yafa Shukrun, who was the homeroom teacher injured on the trip, takes a long look around and smiles ruefully. “I don’t know how to explain it, but to me you will always stay 14,” she tells her former students. “That’s how I’ll always remember you, as if time froze. I look at you now, and I remember the faces of young girls.”
Someone slots a disk into the CD player.
It is “the song” – the last song they heard before arriving at Naharayim: Ruhama Raz’s “Be’eretz Ahavati” (In the land that I love), which includes the line: “In the land that I love / waiting for a guest / seven girls, seven moms, seven brides / in the gates.”
Some of the women begin to cry.
When the bus reaches the Naharayim gates, a Jordanian soldier requests IDs – standard procedure – but it instills fear in the vehicle. Oshrit Buaron, who has been quiet for most of the trip, breaks down and starts to shiver: “Please don’t let him enter the bus,” she cries out. “I am begging you.”
The soldier stays outside.
The women disembark and start crossing the bridge that marks the official beginning of “the Island.” The tower has been rebuilt since the massacre and Jordanian guards were moved further down the road.
“What will prevent them from shooting us?” Buaron says, stopping.
“Look how far away the guard tower is,” says Keren, pointing at the post. They continue walking.
Finally, inside the Island of Peace, the women remember.
“I was standing here,” Hila, approaching a point just near the slope of the hill. “When I heard the shooting begin, I looked back and I saw the soldier running down the tower steps, continuing to shoot. Within seconds, girls started running and rolling down the hill. I tripped and fell.”
“I was kneeling and screaming ‘Shema Yisrael, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!’ when suddenly I looked ahead and I saw my friend Keren Cohen running,” Hila recalls. “I yelled, ‘Keren, be careful, Keren be careful!’ She fell and stopped. I knew she was gone. That’s when I noticed that I was hit as well.”
“Yafa was hit too,” her sister Keren says about their teacher. “I saw her fall on the hot asphalt. I screamed, ‘Yafa get up, Yafa get up!!’ I took just a few steps – and I got hit as well.”
Seventy bullets
The soldier fired off about 70 bullets, emptying more than two magazines, before his rifle jammed. As he attempted to fix the jam, Jordanian soldiers captured him. He was later tried and found guilty. He is still serving his 25-year sentence in a Jordanian prison.
“I stood about 100 meters from there, down the hill,” recalls eyewitness Orna Shimoni. After the massacre, she built a monument on the hill made of flowers shaped in the names of the seven girls.
“I saw the girls rolling and rolling, and their screams tore up the sky. They kept crying ‘Ima! Ima!’ At some point, everything became silent. And I thought, he finished them all off,” says Shimoni, a veteran peace activist. “To this day I cannot forget them screaming and calling their mothers.”
The girls were rushed to the hospital.
“The doctor pulled back the blanket and Keren Cohen was lying there, all pale and her lips were purple,” Hila says. “I told him, ‘Don’t bother. I saw her get killed. She’s gone.’” As she finishes retelling the story of her friend’s death, Hila falls into her sister’s arms and they both burst into tears.
Keren says after the massacre she kept calling out, “Bring me my sister, bring me my sister!” She holds Hila now and smiles through her tears. “I was so afraid I am going to lose you too.”
They take each others’ hands and walk away from the site. Their young faces look exhausted, but maybe even a bit relieved. “I was looking for my childhood here today,” Hila says. “I’m still looking. I can’t say how my life would be if that event never happened. But perhaps I would have been a happier person.”
Keren and Yafa stand off on the side. “So many years, so many things we lost,” Keren says to her former teacher. Yafa nods. “I used to love fireworks – now I dread them. I’m afraid of the noise.” Keren says that after the massacre she stopped participating in Independence Day and Purim celebrations.
“On Independence Day I hide in my parents’ basement, and don’t leave until it’s over.”
On the way back to central Israel, night falls, and for a long time everyone is quiet, lost in their own thoughts. Yafa goes through pictures and shows them to the girls. Others fall asleep. Only when we get close to Beit Shemesh, they feel the need to discuss the experience once more. Most say they are glad they went, but the attack will always overshadow their lives.
Others are upset at the way they are treated; they feel survivors’ guilt from the parents of the seven who were killed, ignored by the nation. “It’s sad that nobody cares about us anymore. We, the ones who remained alive, are nothing. And we shall always be nothing,” says Michal Sabag.
An argument erupts. Some agree with Sabag. Yafa does not, but she believes this argument is a good thing. “It took us 15 years to acknowledge our place in this story. It took us all these years to accept the fact that the survivors mean something as well.”