Tunisia-Photos:34 years since Israel bombed Hammam Chott

Tunisia and The Embassy of the State of Palestine in Tunis commemorated the 34th anniversary of the Israeli massacre on Hammam-Shat in Tunis on October 1, 1985. The raid was carried out by Israel’s occupation air forces killing 68 people and wounding 100 Palestinians and Tunisians.

Palestine ambassador to Tunisia Heil El Fahoum, Hammam-Lif governor Mohamed Ali Hamrouni, Tunisians and the Palestinian community in Tunisia paid tribute to the victims in Hammam-Shat cemetery and laid A wreath of flowers was laid on the memorial.

On Tuesday, October 1, 1985, a unit of Israeli air force warfare aircraft (numbered between six and eight aircraft) propelled an air raid on Hamamnt Chat. The suburb was the main headquarters of several offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)facilities were destroyed in less than 10 minutes of the air raid.

The raids were designed to target Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, though he was not present at the time.

In his testimony on that period, Taher al-Sheikh, the head of the office of the Palestinian News & Info Agency, WAFA, in Tunisia, announced that “The Israeli Air Force officers, led by Amos Lapidot and accompanied by Mossad agents led by Nahum Admoni, we’re preparing to open champagne bottles in Tel Aviv and drink toasts to celebrate their victory in the massacre, until they were disappointingly surprised by Arafat’s sudden appearance on TV channels, standing on the ashes of his destroyed house and threatening Israel with a harsh counterattack.

Caid Essebsi, who was a foreign minister at the time, pushed the Reagan administration not to veto a UN resolution denouncing the Israeli raid. He had in his sleeve a warning to cut relations with the United States in case of a Washington veto.

In the United Nations Security Council Resolution 573 (1985), the Security Council voted (with the United States abstaining) to denounce the raid on Tunisian territory as a flagrant breach of the United Nations Charter and estimated that Tunisia had the right to appropriate reparations.

Images: Courtesy of the Embassy of the State of Palestine in Tunisia