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"She was just in her stroller"

Terrorist who armed baby killer walks free in prisoner exchange - and there's nothing we can do

Twenty-three years after a sniper deliberately targeted a 10-month-old infant in Hebron, the man who supplied the murder weapon returns home to a heroes' welcome.

Gila Isaacson
Gila Isaacson
3 min read
The funeral of baby Shalhevet Pass who was shot and killed by a Palestinian at close range during the Second Intifada. March 26, 2001.
Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90

The stroller still stands in Israel's national military museum – a reminder of one of the Second Intifada's most shocking attacks. Now, the case that shook Israel's conscience has returned to headlines with the release of Sagdui Hamed Shaker Zaro, the man who armed the sniper who deliberately targeted 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass.

On March 26, 2001, in broad daylight, a Palestinian sniper took aim from Hebron's Abu Sneena neighborhood. His target, investigators would later confirm, was specifically chosen: a baby girl with her father in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood below. The first shot struck Shalhevet in the head, killing her instantly. The sniper then waited, and when her father Yitzchak tried to shield his daughter's body, shot him too.

"The judges couldn't hide their horror," recalls former prosecutor David Cohen, who handled the original case. "In all my years of prosecution, I'd never seen hardened judges so shaken. The sniper had a clear line of sight. He chose the baby. He waited to shoot the father. This wasn't combat – it was an execution of an infant."

Yesterday, as part of ongoing prisoner exchanges, Israeli authorities released Zaro, who investigators say provided the weapon used in the attack. As a member of Fatah's Tanzim militant wing, Zaro was part of a cell responsible for multiple shooting attacks in the Hebron area during the Second Intifada, including an assault that wounded a teenager and soldier at Hadassah House.

The release has reopened deep wounds in Israeli society. Shalhevet's murder became a defining moment of the Second Intifada – not just for its brutality, but for what followed. Her small body lay unburied for days as her family demanded the military retake the sniper's nest. Songs were written about her. A Torah scroll bears her name. Her stroller, preserved with bullet holes intact, stands as testament to an innocence shattered.

"People ask why we remember one baby when so many died in those years," says historian Dr. Sarah Levi. "But Shalhevet's murder represented something different – the deliberate targeting of a baby, the waiting to shoot her father, the cold calculation of it all. It crossed a line that shocked even those numbed by daily violence."

The impact rippled through both societies. Shalhevet's father, consumed by grief, joined an underground Jewish militant group and served two years for planning revenge attacks. The Palestinian Authority faced international condemnation. And Hebron's already tense Jewish-Arab relations deteriorated further.

Now, as Zaro returns to Hebron, the questions that haunted Israel in 2001 resurface: How does society balance the imperative of recovering hostages with the pain of releasing those involved in terror? What price is too high for peace? And how does a nation heal when yesterday's wounds are reopened by today's necessities?

In the military museum, beside Shalhevet's stroller, there's a photo – a smiling baby girl who never reached her first birthday. Below it, a simple caption reads: "She was just in her stroller." Twenty-three years later, as her killer's accomplice walks free, those five words still carry the weight of all that was lost that spring afternoon in Hebron.


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