Sept 20, 2013 - Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, of Bat Yam was lured by a Palestinian co-worker to an open area north of the village of Siniria, where he was murdered and his body concealed in a well.
On Friday, September 20, Nidal Amar, a resident of Beit Amin, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, convinced Sgt. Tomer Hazan - his co-worker at a Bat Yam restaurant - to share a taxi to Shaarei Tikva, a town near his village. When the two arrived at the village, Nidal took the soldier to an open field north of the village of Siniria, where he murdered him. He then dumped his body in a well. Amar said his motive for the murder was to ‘trade’ the soldier’s body for the release of his brother, Nur al-Din Amar, a Fatah Tanzim member in prison since 2003.
While Nidal Amar is not known to have belonged to a terrorist organization, Fatah's military wing, the Al Aqsa Brigades, issued a statement that it had sponsored the murder of Hazan.
Friends spoke of him as the life of the party with a wicked sense of humor, a gracious and generous young man who planned to travel with his friends after their army service and then move in with them in a bachelor pad in Tel Aviv. Hazan had a magnetic smile, friends said, and would light up and steal the microphone when a song he loved was played at karaoke. He was described as an eternal optimist who loved to blow money on clothes, a good-hearted young man whose trust in the good will of others lead to his death.
One of his three brothers, Ophir, described Sergeant Hazan in the eulogy as the family’s fashion and hairstyle consultant who was always in motion. Whenever he told his brother to slow down and rest, he said, Sergeant Hazan replied, “You only live once.”
Sgt. Tomer Hazan was bured in the Holon military cemetery. He is survived by his parents, Aryeh and Sara, and three brothers.