On the 3rd March 2002 the Palestinian young man Thaer Hammad carried out a sniper attack against Israeli soldiers with a first World War American-made M1 rifle containing 70 rounds of ammunition. Hammad managed to kill 11 Israeli soldiers and injure 9 others.
Hammad who was later given the title of Wadi al-Haramiya sniper carried out the attack which was named Oyoun al-Haramiya operation in Wadi al-Haramiya area between the cities of Ramallah and Nablus.
Hammad was born in Silwad town northeast of Ramallah and has five brothers. He paid 1300 Jordanian dinars for the old rifle along with 350 bullets and used it for training and then for carrying out the attack.
The Israeli occupation forces arrested Hammad 30 months after the attack. He was sentenced to 11 life sentences then transferred to Eshel central prison where he was placed in the isolation ward No. 4.
Oyoun al-Haramiya attack falls in line with a series of resistance operations that were carried out in that area against the British and Israeli occupation.
According to the testimonies of elderly people in that area Wadi al-Haramiya and the adjacent Wadi al-Balat area witnessed qualitative operations in the Palestinian revolution against the British mandate between 1937- 1939 where dozens of British soldiers were shot and killed by Palestinian resistance fighters.
During al-Aqsa Intifada and between 2000- 2003 a number of similar operations were carried out in the area killing more than 25 Israeli soldiers the most important of which was the sniper attack carried out by Thaer Hammad.
