“I Thought I Was the Only One Left Alive”: A Child Survivor of the 1948 Dawayima Massacre Speaks

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…