On Tunisia’s eastern coast, the Mediterranean Sea glistens under a relentless sun. Locals, slathered in sunscreen, nibble harissa-filled sandwiches on the steps of what once served as the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) headquarters – before Israel bombed it.
“They called for emergency aid after the strike. At first, everyone thought it was Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi,” recalled Jamel Bahrini, a nurse among the first responders to arrive that morning of Tuesday, 1 October 1985.
In 1984 and 1985, relations between Libya and Tunisia had soured. The unity between the two states had collapsed. Gaddafi was furious over Tunisia’s rejection of his overtures and its alignment with the West, openly threatening military action if Tunisia continued what he deemed hostile policies or allowed US or Israeli operations on its soil.
But it wasn’t Gaddafi. By 10 am that Tuesday, sixty Palestinians and eighteen Tunisians lay dead beneath the rubble of four buildings in Hammam Chott, a quiet neighbourhood of residences and the PLO’s headquarters.
Six Israeli planes targeted the headquarters of Force 17 (Yasser Arafat’s security service), one of Arafat’s houses, the telecommunications office, and the prison where the PLO kept its prisoners. All prisoners were reportedly killed in the strike.
“I climbed this tree to retrieve the body of a martyr,” Jamel said, pointing to a bending tree at the site where Israel had struck.
The bodies of Tunisians and Palestinians were so entwined that distinguishing one from the other was impossible. The mingling of their blood became a social expression among Tunisians whenever Palestine was mentioned – a testament not only to the injustice witnessed on television screens for years but to death experienced in the flesh, neighbours mourned, and sovereignty violated on an ordinary Tuesday.
Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO and the strike’s intended target, stood amid the ruins, watching the bodies of his comrades and Tunisians who had welcomed him after his expulsion from Beirut following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
He would have been among the dead if he hadn’t been stuck in traffic coming back from a tribute to former Tunisian minister Abdallah Farhat at the Kasbah.
“They landed like birds on the sea, so fast. They left a big hole – like the ones we see now in Gaza,” said Nizar, a taxi driver who witnessed the strike, as TNA visited the Martyrs’ Cemetery where the victims rest.
Due to the shock, one of the PLO buildings was transformed into a gigantic hole that filled up with water like a well.
At the heart of Hammam Chott stands a ten-foot monument depicting a man, bare-handed, trying to stop a rocket, his feet rooted firmly to the earth. On its back, the word “Resist” is inscribed.
Nearby, young boys kick a football and chat about cartoons, their favourite players, and what it means to free Palestine.
Anti-occupation consciousness flourished here faster than in other places in the world. While elsewhere it took decades and years of oppression to voice ‘Free Palestine’ openly, here it’s something children learn at a very young age – the moment they look at the destruction Israel left in their neighbourhood.
“Mahlaha Falasteen,”(How sweet Palestine is), a young boy said, guiding TNA to the Martyrs’ Cemetery, where victims of the so-called Wooden Leg operation lie.
The operation was dubbed ‘Wooden Leg’ by Israeli authorities, who never revealed the reasons behind the name. Locals associate it with a Jewish Tunisian pharmacist who shuttered his shop the day before the bombing and never returned. His wooden leg and disappearance stirred suspicions he was a spy. Neither Tunisian nor Israeli authorities have ever confirmed this.
The cemetery, perched on a hill reminiscent of Jalil’s mountains, is surrounded by a cautious but welcoming suburb in Hammam-Lif. Some graves bear names; others only say “martyr.” After bodies and blood mixed beneath the rubble, the dead were buried together. Visitors cry over the graves, mourning all those killed unjustly in Tunisia, Palestine, Lebanon, and elsewhere.
Apart from a 1976 hostage rescue mission in Uganda, this was the furthest location the Israeli military had attacked at the time. The jets were US-made F-15s, refuelling mid-flight to complete the round trip to Tunisia and back.
The strike came after former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres vowed revenge for the assassination (not claimed by the PLO) of three Israeli nationals in Cyprus on 25 September earlier that year.
Tunisia had long stood in solidarity with Palestine, though it maintained a Western-aligned foreign policy steeped in Cold War anti-communism. It seemed like the perfect place to relocate the PLO while keeping an eye on them.
After the Hammam Chott attack, President Bourguiba – the man who led Tunisia’s liberation from France – openly questioned what Tunisia’s loyalty to the West had won it if the price was an Israeli bombing attack on its soil.
Even the United States abstained when the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted to condemn the Israeli attacks, foregoing its usual veto.
“It changed me forever,” Jamel said, standing on the cemented ground where PLO leaders once convened, surrounded by ruins left uncleared.
“It felt like something that happened and kept happening. No one cleared the rubble. People passed by it, smoked, drank beers, left their cans.”
The state never transformed the site into a memorial. The trees where martyrs’ bodies fell still bend in the wind, and the mosaic floor of the meeting room remains.
There is no sign to inform passersby of what transpired, but locals, forty-five years on, have never forgotten.
Jamel devoted three years to investigating the strike, sleeping at Hammam Chott’s train station, walking its streets, and speaking with residents.
He joined convoys to Gaza, was once arrested in Egypt attempting to cross the Rafah border, and marched in every protest from Sousse to Tunis.
He was 20 when everything happened, a young nurse with dreams of climbing the career ladder and maybe one day crossing the sea beyond Sidi Bou Said – the usual ambitions of the young.
But the strike altered him. Since then, he has never removed his keffiyeh, which he wears draped over his shoulders everywhere – at work, weddings, the beach. He says it reminds him of his responsibility towards Palestine, serving as a moral compass.
“My hands were blessed by the blood of the martyrs. I won’t shake anyone’s hand without asking about Palestine first,” he said, smiling.
Now, like many Tunisian activists, Jamel campaigns to criminalise normalisation with Israel and organises convoys to break Gaza’s siege.
Tunisia’s new generation wants nothing to do with Israel
“If Hammam Chott taught us anything, it’s that we need to criminalise normalisation,” said Brahim Ben Hmida, a 19-year-old student and the co-founder of the 7 October group, a social media platform raising awareness about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Three years after Hammam Chott, Mossad assassinated Khalil Al-Wazir, known as Abu Jihad, architect of the first Palestinian intifada, at his home in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia.
These events convinced many Tunisians that Israeli intelligence had infiltrated the country and that, despite no official normalisation, the government tolerated Israeli crimes on its soil.
Calls to criminalise normalisation resurfaced during the 2011 revolution against the Ben Ali regime, seen as inching towards official ties with Tel Aviv.
After Ben Ali’s fall, various groups pushed to pass anti-normalisation legislation, even enshrining it in the constitution.
Under the Islamist Ennahda majority, passing such a bill seemed inevitable, given the party’s pro-Palestine stance. Yet the bill stalled.
In December 2015, the left-wing Popular Front submitted a draft law to criminalise all ties with Israel – political, economic, cultural – even indirect contact.
Despite ritualised public pressure, the bill was tabled and taken up for commission review but ultimately quietly buried before reaching a plenary session.
Both ruling parties – secular Nidaa Tounès and Islamist Ennahda – were accused by the Popular Front of conducting a dilatory manoeuvre, effectively postponing or blocking debate.
On 15 December 2016, Mohamed Zouari, a Tunisian aeronautics engineer and Hamas drone programme developer, was assassinated in Sfax, likely by Mossad. Zouari’s killing intensified the push to outlaw normalisation.
Authorities, however, remained reluctant, citing Western pressure and national interest.
In 2023, President Kais Saied, a self-proclaimed anti-normalisation ruler, blocked a parliamentary session on the bill, echoing the same concerns.
This hinted at a cautious opening for possible Tunisian-Israeli rapprochement, even under the leadership of someone like Saied. However, even some of his fierce opponents argued that the bill would not only be harmful to the economy but also could provide a broad law for prosecuting dissent and those in the diaspora.
“No, there’s no debate. Normalisation should be criminalised. We don’t negotiate economic benefits when it comes to Palestine,” Ben Brahim said firmly.
Unlike many global pro-Palestine movements, the Tunisian branch does not shy away from supporting armed resistance.
On this year’s Nakba anniversary, the Tunisian Group for Palestine hosted historians, musicians, and members of Hamas and Yemen’s Houthis – groups often targeted by US sanctions.
While other movements, like Morocco’s, lean towards a nonviolent approach, at least in their statements to media, Tunisia’s embraces its anti-colonial stance. “We embrace the hands that hold arms against the enemy,” that’s how Tunisian activists usually start their speeches.
At protests, Wael Naouar, a prominent activist, sometimes carries mock Hamas rockets as crowds chant, “Take us to Palestine to fight the Zionists.”
“We were colonised once. Every person has the right to fight their occupier. Palestinians deserve freedom from a genocide that began in 1948,” Jamel Bahrini insists, heading towards a protest in front of a Carrefour store, one of the BDS targeted businesses over its alleged ties to Israeli illegal settlements.
Somoud: The road to Gaza
It was 4 am on 9 June, and Wael, Jamel, and Brahim all stood among a large crowd in Tunis, chanting as the Somoud convoy prepared to depart for Gaza.
The convoy, travelling through Libya and Egypt, aimed to break the siege Israel has enforced since October 2023, worsening in recent months. It was forced to return to Tunisia, however, after being refused permission to enter Egypt.
Wael, one of the convoy’s organisers, stayed up all night monitoring updates on the Flotilla’s Madleen boat, recently intercepted, with all aboard – including French MP Rima Hassan and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg – arrested.
“The timing between the Madleen’s interception and the convoy’s launch is no coincidence. It’s a message: stop dozens and thousands will come,” Naouar said.
Though lacking prominent names, Tunisians, joined by other activists from all over the Maghreb, have vowed to make the journey.
“We don’t believe in the impossible,” Naouar said, smiling.
Farmers, labour unions, students, and football ultras erupted in a chant from the Jasmine Revolution fifteen years prior: “If one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call. Their night will fade, and their chains will break and fall,” as buses carrying over 1,5000 of Tunisian and Algerian activists began their journey toward Gaza.
Basma El Atti is The New Arab’s correspondent in Morocco.
Follow her on Twitter: @elattibasma
