Island of Peace Massacre

Naharayim lies in the Jordan Valley on the Israel–Jordan border, at the confluence of the Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers.[4][5] The Island of Peace was a man-made island in this border area, where arrangements following the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty allowed Israeli agriculture and tourism to continue on Jordanian territory.[6] Israeli farmers had cultivated land there since the 1950s, making continued access to the area an agricultural as well as a diplomatic concern.[7]

Under the 1994 agreement, Israel ceded sovereignty over the Naharayim area to Jordan, while King Hussein allowed Israeli farmers to continue working the land and Israeli tourists to visit.[5] Naharayim became one of two Jordanian agricultural territories subject to 25-year leasing arrangements with Israel.[6] These arrangements were automatically renewable unless either side gave a year’s notice to terminate them and enter consultations.[6][8] Israelis could visit the island without a passport even though it was part of Jordan.[6]

After the treaty, the area was renovated and a visitor park was established there.[4] The park brought Israeli school groups into a landscape associated with the opening of relations between the two countries, and the girls attacked in March 1997 were visiting it on an annual school trip.[4] The schoolchildren’s presence at Naharayim thus took place within the access arrangements that followed the peace agreement, rather than an unauthorized crossing into Jordan.[4][5]

The attack occurred approximately three years after the peace treaty, at a time when relations between the two governments were already strained.[9][10] It followed a bitter exchange of letters between King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[10] The diplomatic disagreement preceded the shooting, which then brought relations to a particularly low point.[10] Naharayim’s combination of Jordanian sovereignty, Israeli visitors, and agricultural cooperation formed the immediate setting for the crisis that followed.[6][5]

On March 13, 1997, seventh- and eighth-grade girls from AMIT Fuerst School in Beit Shemesh visited Naharayim on a class trip.[1] The students attended a religious school, and the seven girls who were killed were aged 13 to 14.[1][4] Their attacker, Ahmed Daqamseh, was a 26-year-old Jordanian army soldier serving as a border guard.[1][11]

Teacher Yaffa Shukron recalled that the group had just listened to a brief explanation of the view when the gunfire began.[12] The girls had their backs to the guard tower where the attacker was positioned, and neither the students nor the accompanying adults initially understood what was happening.[12] One survivor remembered three shots followed by a pause, during which the girls were told that the sound was routine practice fire.[12] The shooting then resumed, this time visibly directed at the group.[12]

Daqamseh fired from an observation tower with an M-16 rifle taken from another soldier.[13] He subsequently descended from the tower and continued firing as the girls fled down a hill.[13] A survivor separately recalled seeing him shooting while coming down the guard-tower stairs.[12] Teachers pushed students down a slope in an effort to get them out of the line of fire and into cover.[12] Shukron was wounded while trying to protect one of the students.[12]

Nearby resident Orna Shimoni had left the school group shortly before the shooting.[7] She recalled witnessing the attack and running toward an army bunker, then reaching an Israeli police outpost, taking a radio, and calling for a helicopter.[7] In her recollection, ambulances arrived after about 10 minutes.[7] Other Jordanian soldiers seized Daqamseh and rushed to assist the victims.[14] He was captured at the scene.[15]

Seven schoolgirls were killed: Sivan Fatihi, Karen Cohen, Ya’ala Me’iri, Shiri Badayev, Natali Alkalai, Adi Malka, and Nirit Cohen.[1] Other students and teacher Yaffa Shukron were wounded in the attack.[1][12] The teacher’s account of trying to shield a child, together with the survivors’ recollections of the flight down the slope, describes how the accompanying adults sought to protect the girls while the shooting continued.[12]

The casualties included children who had come from Beit Shemesh for an ordinary school excursion to the border park.[1][4] The seven deaths became the central focus of the ensuing mourning, the king’s visits to Israel, and the memorial later established at Naharayim.[4][16] The attack also immediately placed the Jordanian government in the position of responding to the murder of Israeli children by one of its own border guards on territory under Jordanian rule.[11]

Jordan’s government immediately condemned the shooting.[11] King Hussein returned from a vacation in Spain and telephoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his plane to express his condolences.[17] He issued repeated condemnations and called on his troops to guard against “treacherous or hateful agents” entering their ranks.[10] Addressing the failure to stop the attack at once, he called it “a mark of shame” that those who had seen the shooting had not shot the attacker “immediately.”[10]

The Jordanian authorities announced an investigative committee that would include Israeli Police Commissioner Anton Ayov.[10] Security forces also closed the entrance to Daqamseh’s home village of Ibdir to everyone except its residents.[11] Those prevented from entering included a tribal delegation, opposition figures, and foreign diplomats.[11] The closure also blocked a group of supporters seeking to visit the soldier’s family.[10]

The killings enraged the Israeli public and prompted doubts about the desirability of peace with Jordan.[3] The crisis affected a relationship whose treaty was only three years old, and the massacre shocked people in both countries.[7] Hussein’s response included not only official condemnation and an investigation but a personal journey to the homes of the murdered girls’ families in Israel.[11][16]

On March 16, Hussein made his condolence visit to the bereaved families.[18] He went from home to home in Beit Shemesh during the mourning period and also met wounded students.[16] At Sivan Fatihi’s home, Hussein told her father, “Your loss is my loss,” and said that he felt he had lost a child.[2] His visits and expressions of grief were deeply appreciated by Israelis and helped calm the public outrage that had followed the killings.[7][3]

During his visit to Adi Malka’s parents, Hussein said, “I feel as if I have lost my daughter,” and expressed the hope that they would regard him as a brother and family member.[17] At Ya’ala Me’iri’s home, her mother challenged him about the attacker’s conduct.[2] Hussein replied that no sane person would do such a thing, promised a full investigation, and called the crime a disgrace to himself, his family, and the Jordanian people.[2]

At the press conference following his visits, Hussein said Jordanians felt “angry, ashamed, stained, puzzled, shocked” by what had happened to the children.[16] He called for the events to be investigated “in the minutest detail.”[16] He and Netanyahu also discussed the possibility of a children’s park at Baqura as a memorial.[16] His public remarks accompanied the private condolences delivered to the bereaved families and his meetings with wounded students.[16]

A further act of compensation followed on February 8, 1998, when Hussein sent Israeli President Ezer Weizman a check for $1 million for the families of the seven girls.[18] The payment came after the initial condolence visits and the public pledges to investigate the shooting.[18][16]

Daqamseh was prosecuted before a Jordanian military court.[11] A five-member military tribunal found him guilty in July 1997 of opening fire and killing the seven girls.[14] He received a sentence of life imprisonment with hard labor.[14] The tribunal spared him the death penalty after finding him mentally unstable; under the Jordanian law described in coverage of the proceedings, the life sentence was equivalent to 20 years.[14] A Jordanian medical team also diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder.[7]

The conviction did not end political campaigning on his behalf.[19] In 2013, 110 Jordanian parliamentarians signed a petition calling for his release.[19] Calls for a pardon were raised repeatedly in Jordan during his imprisonment.[1] Demands for his release also appeared in later Jordanian political debate over identity and relations with Israel.[20]

Daqamseh was released on March 12, 2017, after serving 20 years in prison.[1] He returned to Ibdir in northern Jordan, where cheering supporters welcomed him.[1] The celebrations reopened the families’ pain, with bereaved parents describing the public welcome as deeply distressing.[17] Reactions within Jordan included both expressions of support for him and criticism of the attack, rather than a single uniform response.[17]

Since 1998, Orna Shimoni has maintained a memorial to the seven murdered girls at Naharayim, called “The Hill of Plucked Flowers.”[7] Its paths lead to seven small earth mounds surrounded by grass, with the girls’ names formed in seasonal flowers.[7][4] Shimoni replaces the flowers three times a year, preserving the names through successive seasons.[7] Her work at the memorial followed her presence at the site on the day of the shooting, when she had called for emergency assistance.[7]

The memorial gives each of the seven girls an individual place within a shared site of remembrance.[4] Rather than commemorating the victims only through a single inscription, the earth mounds bear their separate names in living flowers.[7][4] The paths, grass, and planted names are the defining elements of the memorial described in accounts of the site.[7][4]

Families also held annual tree-planting events there on Tu Bishvat.[4] One bereaved mother explained that the intention was to make the commemoration emphasize life and growth.[4] These gatherings placed the victims’ families at the center of continuing remembrance at Naharayim, alongside Shimoni’s regular care of the flower-covered mounds.[7][4]

Hussein’s condolence visits became another enduring element of the massacre’s aftermath.[1][3] His act of bowing or kneeling before the bereaved families, and his words identifying their loss with his own, made a strong impression on the Israeli public.[1][3] The visits helped reduce the anger generated by the murder of the children and the doubts that the killings had raised about peace with Jordan.[3] His response was therefore remembered not only as an expression of personal sorrow but as an action that helped contain the diplomatic crisis.[3]

The massacre is included among the serious crises survived by the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.[8] Despite the shock of the killings and the strain they placed on relations, the treaty continued to underpin bilateral cooperation.[8] The episode consequently appears in retrospective accounts both as a severe rupture in public confidence and as a test that did not end the formal peace between the states.[3][8]

Sources differ on when and why the name “Island of Peace” was applied. The Jewish Virtual Library and the Center for Israel Education describe the name as predating the massacre and relating to passport-free Israeli access to Jordanian territory, while a Congressional Research Service report says Naharayim was renamed after the killings to commemorate the victims.[6][5][9] The flower-covered memorial and the continuing recollection of Hussein’s visits became prominent features of the site’s post-massacre history.[7][4]

The victims’ school and hometown also remained central to accounts of the event.[1][16] The girls were remembered as seventh- and eighth-grade pupils from Beit Shemesh, and the king’s journey took him into the homes where their families were mourning.[1][16] The public history of the massacre thus includes the school trip, the individual children commemorated at Naharayim, and the direct encounters between the Jordanian monarch and the bereaved parents.[1][4]

Organized support for Daqamseh emerged in Jordan soon after the massacre, in sharp contrast to the government’s condemnation.[10] Islamist and leftist groups opposed to the peace process sought to defend him in court.[10] A Jordan Bar Association-led group of more than 100 supporters attempted to visit his family, but police prevented them from entering Ibdir.[10] The group then prayed for the soldier’s “victory” and the “Jews’ defeat” and announced support for his parents.[10]

The proposed inclusion of an Israeli police commissioner in the investigative committee also drew criticism in Jordan.[10] Opponents argued that Israeli participation could infringe on Jordanian sovereignty.[10] These objections concerned the conduct of the investigation, while the campaigns supporting Daqamseh extended to his legal defense and, later, demands for his release.[10][19]

The 2013 parliamentary petition demonstrated substantial support for releasing him among Jordanian legislators: 110 parliamentarians signed it.[19] After his eventual release in 2017, celebratory posters and supportive social-media messages appeared, alongside the cheering reception in his village.[1][17] Other Jordanian responses condemned him as a criminal or rejected the attack as something to celebrate.[17] These individual reactions and organized campaigns do not establish a uniform view among Jordanians.[17]

Daqamseh later claimed that he had fired because the girls interrupted his prayer by whistling and clapping, and said that he began shooting after asking his companion to leave.[19] This was his own account of his motive, rather than an independently established explanation of the murders.[19] The tribunal’s finding concerning his mental condition formed part of its sentencing decision, whereas his claimed justification remained his personal account.[14][19]