A shepherd from the "Tzon Aviezer" hilltop outpost in Samaria who set out with his flock this week to the slope overlooking the nearby Kana Stream found a monument to a Hamas terrorist in the pasture area.
Upon further inspection, the terrorist memorialized by the monument perpetrated the horrific attack on a bus in Emmanuel, which left 11 Jews dead.
The incident occurred two and a half decades ago when a terror cell from the village of Tel in Samaria, led by the arch terrorist, Nasser Asida, set out on a series of severe attacks in the area. The first attack struck the outskirts of Yitzhar, where two security patrolmen, Shlomo Libman and Harel Ben-Nun, were murdered.
The cell managed to flee and found a hideout in the large swath of territory in the Kana Stream, between Yitzhar and Emmanuel, which was handed over to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords.
In 2001, the cell committed a shocking massacre of passengers on a bus in the town of Emmanuel. In the combined attack using explosive devices and guns, 11 Jews were murdered, and 30 were wounded. A few months later, the IDF managed to track down several of the cell members who were hiding between Yitzhar and Emmanuel at the ancient Khirbet Jarah site, and a gunfight ensued. One terrorist was eliminated, but the others managed to flee and were eliminated years later.
Following the elimination of terrorist Muhammad Haj Ali, Arabs from the village of Jama’in erected a memorial glorifying him at the site and dubbed the strategic ridge the “Land of the Martyrs." About a year ago, the Tzon Aviezer outpost was established on the ridge with the stated goal of restoring Jewish control over an area that had become a Palestinian extraterritorial zone.
The establishment of the outpost sparked an uproar among local Arabs. In the nearby village, residents declared that “a Jewish community cannot be established in the Land of the Martyrs" and expressed concern for the terrorist’s memorial. Residents of the outpost understood that such a memorial existed in the area but were unable to locate it.
Earlier this week, a shepherd from the outpost unexpectedly discovered the site, which overlooks the Kana Stream and has since become part of the outpost’s grazing land.
Residents of the outpost called on the IDF to demolish the memorial immediately and described the changes the area has undergone over the past year: “Every day that the memorial to this arch-terrorist remains standing is a badge of shame for the State of Israel and a painful reminder of the lawlessness that prevailed here until recently."
They added: “The Oslo Accords created a dangerous situation of ‘black holes’ and Arab autonomous areas in the heart of Judea and Samaria, which provided fertile ground for murderous terrorist cells to hide and operate. At the very location where the memorial was found, courageous Jewish hikers discovered only two years ago an illegal terrorist firing range operating inside a cave, demonstrating the depth of the lawlessness."
“Over the past year, we have been working to change this situation. Together with the two additional settlement points, Kfar Ro’im and Mevo Kana, we have succeeded for the first time in creating a continuous Jewish territorial presence that divides this bloc lengthwise. The terrorist cells that hid in the area have been replaced by Jewish shepherds. With our own hands, we are shattering the dream of a Palestinian state. Thirty-three years after the signing of the bloody Oslo Accords, the time has come to correct the damage," the outpost said.