Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
16 April
ISRAELI KILL TEAM ASSASSINATE PALESTINIAN LEADER IN TUNISIA
On this day in 1988, Israeli soldiers killed Khalil Wazir in his home in Tunis. Known also as Abu Jihad, Wazir was a co-founder of the nationalist party Fatah. His killing provoked riots in Palestine, with Israel soldiers killing a further twelve Palestinians. The US Government condemned his killing as an "act of political assassination" and the UN Security Council condemned "the aggression perpetrated against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Tunisia", without specifying Israel.
فريق الاغتيالات الإسرائيلي يغتال زعيم فلسطيني في تونس
16 أبريل
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1988 ، قتل جنود إسرائيليون خليل الوزير في منزله في تونس وهو المعروف أيضًا باسم أبو جهاد . كان الوزير أحد مؤسسي حركة فتح لتحرير فلسطين. أثار مقتله أعمال شغب في فلسطين ، حيث قتل الجنود الإسرائيليون اثني عشر فلسطينيا آخر. ودانت الحكومة الأمريكية مقتله باعتباره "عملاً من أعمال الاغتيال السياسي" ، وندد مجلس الأمن الدولي بـ "العدوان على سيادة ووحدة أراضي تونس" ، دون أن يذكر اسم إسرائيل.
Khalil Wazir forced to leave his hometown of Ramle in July 1948 when Zionist militias commanded by Rafi Eitan occupied Ramla and evicted its inhabitants.
This was the single largest mass expulsion of Arabs from Palestine during the Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948-49, the infamous Lydda Death March, in which attacking Israeli troops murdered and pillaged the people and property of Lydda, Ramle and surrounding villages while forcing some 80,000 men, women and children into the scorching wilderness, never to return.
Israeli historian Benny Morris (who later regretted that the ethnic cleansing had not been completed 100%) writes that after intial bombing of the city, military operational HQ noted on July 10 that there was "a general and serious [civilian] flight from Ramle. There is great value in continuing the bombing." Later the HQ staff asked for more bombing and informed units that "Flight from the town of Ramle of women, the old and children is to be facilitated. The [military age] males are to be detained".
Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p425
He and his family made their way to Ramallah and Hebron before settling in Gaza. They settled in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where al-Wazir attended a secondary school run by UNRWA. He and Yāsir Arafat met in 1951 in Cairo, and together they organized anti-Israel guerrilla actions and in 1958 founded Fatah, which merged with other groups in 1964 to form the PLO.
An Israeli military unit assassinated him in his house in the Sidi Bou Said neighborhood in Tunis, on 16 April 1988. They also murdered the family’s Tunisian gardener, who had decided to spend the night there. “He really hadn’t done anything,” according to one of the Israeli commandos but the leader of the Israeli squad, Moshe Yaalon, considered the operation “the perfect hit”.
Khalil's body was taken to Damascus where tens of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians walked in his funeral. He was buried in the Martyrs Cemetery of the Yarmuk refugee camp.
The US condemned the killing of al-Wazir as a "political assassination" and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 611 condemning "the aggression perpetrated against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Tunisia", which omitted mention of Israel.
A partial list of Israeli assassinations of Palestinians
Israel has never ceased its programme of targetted assassinations of Palestinians and other nationalities in the Middle East and around the world, including kidnappings and killings on the streets of Athens, Brussels, London, Munich, Nicosia, Paris and Rome
Thirty years after the assassination of Khalil al-Wazir, the Israeli military commander of the ethnic cleansing of Khalil al-Wazir's family and thousands of others, Rafi Eitan, endorsed the neo-Nazi AfD Party in Germany. He recorded a video praising Alternative for Germany, a party that surged to almost 100 seats in Germany’s general election last September. AfD proudly posted the video on its Facebook page, quoting key parts.
45-minute video: the Israeli assassination of Khalil Al Wazir
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jhrgyIiYxx8