IN the hills west of Hebron, where silence now blankets olive groves and fenced-off ruins, a Palestinian village once thrived. Al-Dawayima was its name — a farming community of nearly 6,000 people, full of children, stone homes, and harvests. That life ended on October 29, 1948.
Now, only memory keeps it alive.
For Abu Bassam Muhammad Ismail Al-Qaisi — who was 10 years old at the time — the massacre that unfolded that day never ended. He watched his family die beside him. He was shot four times. And yet, somehow, he survived.
“I saw everything,” he told Quds News Network. “I lived it. And I remember it all.”
The war had already ended when Israeli forces attacked. The villagers had heard of massacres in nearby places like Deir Yassin. Many fled. But others, like Muhammad’s family, stayed — believing the fighting was over.
That Friday, seven armored vehicles arrived from two directions. Israeli soldiers poured into the streets, firing without warning. There was no resistance. No battle. Only bullets.
“They fired at everything,” Abu Bassam says. “At the people walking, those praying, the homes, even the mosque.”
More than 75 elderly men were killed while praying in the village mosque. Some were locked inside and executed. Others were blown up with explosives. Eyewitnesses later told journalists that Israeli soldiers clubbed children to death and raped women before killing them.
A UN observer who visited later said the number killed might exceed 200.
Israeli historian Benny Morris, drawing from military archives, described Al-Dawayima as one of the largest single massacres of the Nakba. The details were so disturbing that even the newly created Israeli authorities at the time tried to keep it quiet.
But for survivors like Abu Bassam, no official silence could erase what happened.
A Cave Turned into a Grave
As the soldiers swept through the village, Abu Bassam’s family fled on foot. His father, mother, grandmother, and five siblings joined neighbors as they escaped toward a nearby valley called Tur Al-Zagha. Around 100 people — mostly women and children — crowded into a natural cave, hoping the army wouldn’t find them.
But they did.
“One shot was fired by someone trying to defend us,” Abu Bassam recalls. “That was enough. They found the cave.”
The soldiers surrounded the entrance. One dragged a young girl outside and attempted to harass her sexually. Her mother tried to stop him. He shot them both in cold blood. Then, without hesitation, the machine guns opened fire on everyone inside.
“I was shot four times,” Abu Bassam says. “In my side, my leg, my arm.”
His father was shot in the head and died instantly. His mother was holding his baby brother — a toddler just over one year old — when a bullet struck the child’s skull. His grandmother died shielding his younger siblings with her body.
“I thought I was the only one left alive,” he says quietly, choking up as he tries to hold back tears.
When the soldiers left, Abu Bassam, still bleeding, crawled out of the cave. He wandered alone until he found his aunt, who had also escaped. Together, they made their way to the nearby town of Dura.
There, he discovered that three of his siblings had miraculously survived — protected by their grandmother’s body during the gunfire.
From Orphan to Teacher: A Life Rebuilt from Ruins
Muhammad, then just 10, spent two months in a field hospital in Hebron. He and his surviving siblings were now orphans, displaced and traumatized. They had no home, no parents, no land to return to.
“We lived in a cave in Khirbet Seema for a while,” he says. “In winter, my younger siblings would cry at night, calling for our mother.”
When villagers tried to return to Al-Dawayima, they found the area sealed off and full of landmines. Some who ventured in to pick olives or retrieve belongings were killed. Israeli soldiers shot at others.
In 1950, Muhammad and a friend tried to retrieve supplies from the village but came under fire and fled. In 1951, the family was moved to Aqbat Jabr refugee camp near Jericho. There, they lived in a tent, baking bread over a fire. His older sister Sabha, only 12, became the head of the family.
Muhammad worked picking olives and plowing fields to help feed his siblings. He built a small mud shelter for them. Against all odds, he stayed in school — and in 1958, he passed the matric exams.
“That was one of the happiest days of my life,” he says. “I felt like I’d broken through the wall of despair.”
He moved to Amman and worked as a waiter. Later, he earned a diploma in education and became a teacher with UNRWA. Over the years, he rose to become a school principal, then an education inspector. He pursued higher education, earning a bachelor’s in accounting and a master’s in education.
He married, raised ten children — six sons and four daughters — and now has 25 grandchildren. Today, at 87, he still works in accounting.
But the past lives with him.
He still remembers the screams in the cave, the sound of gunfire, and the warmth of his mother’s blood. He can still see his baby brother’s shattered skull.
“We were just children,” he says. “And they killed us like we were nothing.” — QNS
