The Qibya massacre occurred during Operation Shoshana, an Israeli so-called reprisal operation that occurred in October 1953, when IDF's Unit 101 led by future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank, which was then under Jordanian control, and killed more than sixty-nine Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of whom were women and children.[1][2]
Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed.[3] Ariel Sharon wrote in his diary that "Qibya was to be an example for everyone," and that he ordered "maximal killing and damage to property". Post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.[4]
The attack followed cross-border raids from the West Bank. Israel framed the Qibya massacre as a response to the Yehud attack, in which an Israeli woman and her two children were killed.[1][5]
The massacre was condemned by the U.S. State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide.[6] The State Department described the raid as "shocking" and used the occasion to confirm publicly that economic aid to Israel had been suspended previously, for other non-compliance regarding the 1949 Armistice Agreements.
Background
The attack took place in the context of border clashes between Israel and neighbouring states, which had begun almost immediately after the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements following onset of the Nakba. Along the 1949 armistice line, infiltrations, armed or otherwise, were frequent from both sides. Many infiltrations from Jordanian territory in the West Bank consisted of unarmed Palestinian refugees attempting to rejoin their families. During 1948–49, most of the infiltrators crossed the borders to harvest crops left behind, to plant new crops in their abandoned lands, or to retrieve goods. Many others came to resettle in their old villages or elsewhere inside Israel, or to visit relatives, or simply to get a glimpse of their abandoned homes and fields. During the following years the vast majority came to steal crops, irrigation pipes, farm animals, or other property belonging to settlers, or to graze their flocks. Some engaged in smuggling goods or mail—certain items, such as Bedouin clothing, were often unavailable in Israel, and there were no postal services between Israel and the Arab states. Others moved through Israeli territory in order to reach other Arab countries, most frequently from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Most of the infiltrators were unarmed individuals, though it appears that the proportion who came armed and in groups steadily increased after 1950.[7]
Half of Jordan's prison population at the time consisted of people arrested for attempting to return to, or illegally enter, Israeli territory, but the number of complaints filed by Israel over infiltrations from the West Bank show a considerable reduction, from 233 in the first nine months of 1952, to 172 for the same period in 1953, immediately before the attack. This marked reduction was in good part the result of increased Jordanian efficiency in patrolling.[8] Between June 1949 and the end of 1952, a total of 57 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by Palestinian infiltrators from the Jordanian West Bank. The Israeli death toll for the first nine months of 1953 was 32.[9] Over roughly the same time (November 1950 – November 1953), the Mixed Armistice Commission condemned Israeli raids 44 times.[8] For the same period, 1949–1953, Jordan maintained that it alone suffered 629 killed and injured from Israeli incursions and cross-border bombings.[8] UN sources for the period, based on the documentation at General Bennike's disposal (prepared by Commander E H Hutchison USNR),[10] lower both estimates.[11][clarification needed]
Over the year leading up to the raid, Israeli forces and civilians had conducted many punitive expeditions, causing destruction of infrastructure and crops and many civilian casualties against Palestinian villages, with Latrun, Falameh (Falāma, Falamya), Rantis, Qalqiliya, Khirbet al-Deir, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna, Wadi Fukin, Idhna, and Surif being the most notable examples.[11] Meanwhile, Palestinian guerilla raids into Israel continued. Over a two-week period in late May and early June, four raids by Palestinian fedayeen killed 3 and wounded 6 people in Israel, at Beit Arif, Beit Nabala, Tirat Yehuda and Kfar Hess which, according to the UN, greatly concerned both the Israeli and Jordanian governments.[12]
The specific incident which the Israeli government used to justify its assault on Qibya occurred on 12 October 1953, when a Jewish woman, Suzanne Kinyas, and her two children were killed by a grenade thrown into their house in the Israeli town of Yehud, some 10 kilometers (6mi) inside of the Green Line. The attack initially drew a sharp rebuke to Jordan from the Mixed Armistice Commission.[8] The Israeli government immediately claimed that the killings were perpetrated by Palestinian infiltrators, a charge queried by Jordanian officials, who were skeptical, and who offered to collaborate with Israel in order to apprehend the guilty parties, whoever and wherever they were. Moshe Sharett said later that "the Commander of the Jordan Legion, Glubb Pasha, had asked for police bloodhounds to cross over from Israel to track down the Yahud attackers".[13] On the other hand, some weeks later, while assisting a United Nations and Jordanian team following the tracks of the person(s) who on 1 November had blown up a water-line in Jordanian territory supplying the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, tracks that led to the Scopus fence, the Israeli inspector delegated to the team denied them permission to enter the Jewish area around Mount Scopus and prosecute their investigation.[8] For the first time, Israel accepted Jordan's offer of assistance and the tracks of the perpetrator were traced to a point 1400m over the border, to a road near Rantis, but dried up there. The United Nations observer team's investigation failed to find any evidence indicating who committed the crime, and the Jordanian delegate to the Mixed Commission condemned the act in strong language on 14 October.[14][15] The Chief of Staff of the Arab Legion in Amman flew to Jerusalem to ask that no retaliatory actions take place that might compromise Jordanian investigations underway on their side of the border.[11]
According to the former Time correspondent to Jerusalem, Donald Neff: "Force had to be used to demonstrate to the Arabs that Israel was in the Middle East to stay, Ben Gurion believed, and to that end he felt strongly that his retaliatory policy had to be continued."[16]
Defense MinisterPinhas Lavon gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The Israeli elected governing cabinet was not informed, and though Minister of Foreign AffairsMoshe Sharett was privy to prior deliberations on whether or not such a punitive raid ought to be conducted, he expressed strong disapproval of the proposal, and was deeply shocked when informed of the outcome.[17]
Qibya 1944 1:20,000
Qibya 1945 1:250,000
The attack
According to the Mixed Armistice Commission report, approved on the afternoon immediately following the operation, and delivered by Major General Vagn Bennike to the UN Security Council, the raid at Qibya took place on the evening of 14 October 1953 at around 9.30 pm, and was taken by roughly half a battalion strength of soldiers from the Israeli regular army. Later sources state the force consisted of 130 IDF troops of whom a third came from Unit 101.[18] The American chairman of the Mixed Armistice Commission in his report to the UN Security Council estimated that between 250 and 300 Israeli soldiers were involved in the attack.[19] The raid was personally led by future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who at the time was a Major in the IDF and the commander of Unit 101.[20]
The attack began with a mortar barrage on the village until Israeli forces reached the outskirts of the village. Israeli troops employed Bangalore torpedoes to breach the barbed-wire fences surrounding the village, and mined roads to prevent Jordanian forces from intervening. At the same time at least 25 mortar shells were fired into the neighbouring village of Budrus. The Israeli troops simultaneously entered the village from three sides. IDF soldiers encountered resistance from soldiers and village guards, and in the gunbattle that followed, 10–12 soldiers and guards defending the village were killed and an Israeli soldier was lightly wounded. Military engineers dynamited dozens of buildings across the village, killing scores of civilians. In the words of historian Rashid Khalidi, the operation “blew up forty-five homes with their inhabitants inside."[21] At dawn, the operation was considered complete, and the Israelis returned home.[22]
Ariel Sharon later wrote in his diary that he had received orders to inflict heavy damage on the Arab Legion forces in Qibya: "The orders were utterly clear: Qibya was to be an example for everyone." Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property", and post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.[4] UN observers noted that they observed bodies near doorways, and bullet marks on the doors of demolished houses, and later concluded that residents might have been forced by heavy fire to stay in their homes.[12]
International reaction
An emergency meeting of the Mixed Armistice Commission (MAC) was held in the afternoon of 15 October and a resolution condemning the regular Israel army for its attack on Qibya, as a breach of article III, paragraph 2,62/ of the Israel-Jordan General Armistice Agreement was adopted by a majority vote.[citation needed]
The attack was universally condemned by the international community. The U.S. State Department issued a bulletin on 18 October 1953, expressing its "deepest sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives" in Qibya as well as the conviction that those responsible "should be brought to account and that effective measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future."[23] The State Department described the raid as "shocking", and used the occasion to confirm publicly that economic aid to Israel had been previously suspended.[24] The aid, as Israel had been informed on 18 September, had been "deferred" until Israel saw fit to cooperate with the United Nations in the Demilitarized Zone, in relation to its ongoing water diversion work near Bnot Ya'akov Bridge;[25] that site had been chosen as the original location for the intake of Israel's National Water Carrier, but it would be moved downstream to the Sea of Galilee at Eshed Kinrot, following this US pressure.[26]
Israeli reaction
The international outcry caused by the operation required a formal reply by Israel. Intense discussions took place, and Moshe Sharett summed up, in his diary on 16 October, the opinion that:
Now the army wants to know how we (the Foreign Ministry) are going to explain the issue. In a joint meeting of army and foreign ministry officials Shmuel Bendor suggested that we say that the army had no part in the operation, but that the inhabitants of the border villages, infuriated by previous incidents and seeking revenge, operated on their own. Such a version will make us appear ridiculous: any child would say that this was a military operation. (16 October 1953)[27]
Notwithstanding Sharett's advice that broadcasting this version would make Israel appear patently "ridiculous", on 19 October Ben-Gurion publicly asserted that the raid had been carried out by Israeli civilians.
None deplores it more than the Government of Israel, if ... innocent blood was spilled ... The Government of Israel rejects with all vigor the absurd and fantastic allegation that 600 men of the IDF took part in the action ... We have carried out a searching investigation and it is clear beyond doubt that not a single army unit was absent from its base on the night of the attack on Qibya. (Statement by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, ISA FM 2435/5)
On Israeli Radio that same day, Ben-Gurion addressed the nation, repeating the accusation that the massacre had been perpetrated by Israeli civilians:
The [Jewish] border settlers in Israel, mostly refugees, people from Arab countries and survivors from the Nazi concentration camps, have, for years, been the target of (...) murderous attacks and had shown a great restraint. Rightfully, they have demanded that their government protect their lives and the Israeli government gave them weapons and trained them to protect themselves. But the armed forces from Transjordan did not stop their criminal acts, until [the people in] some of the border settlements lost their patience and after the murder of a mother and her two children in Yahud, they attacked, last week, the village of Kibya across the border, that was one of the main centers of the murderers' gangs. Every one of us regrets and suffers when blood is shed anywhere and nobody regrets more than the Israeli government the fact that innocent people were killed in the retaliation act in Kibya. But all the responsibility rests with the government of Transjordan that for many years tolerated and thus encouraged attacks of murder and robbery by armed powers in its country against the citizens of Israel.[28]
Israeli historian Avi Shlaim observed that the official Israeli version was not believed, and it did nothing to reduce the damage to Israel's image. "This was not Ben-Gurion's first lie for what he saw as the good of his country, nor was it to be the last, but it was one of the most blatant."[29]
Sharon later claimed that he had "thought the houses were empty" and that the unit had checked all houses before detonating the explosives. In his autobiography Warrior (1987) Sharon wrote:
I couldn't believe my ears. As I went back over each step of the operation, I began to understand what must have happened. For years Israeli reprisal raids had never succeeded in doing more than blowing up a few outlying buildings, if that. Expecting the same, some Arab families must have stayed in their houses rather than running away. In those big stone houses [...] some could easily have hidden in the cellars and back rooms, keeping quiet when the paratroopers went in to check and yell out a warning. The result was this tragedy that had happened.
Uri Avnery, founder and editor of the magazine HaOlam HaZeh, relates that he had both his hands broken when he was ambushed for criticizing the massacre at Qibya in his newspaper.[30]
Results
According to Daniel Byman, the attack, "controversial, brutal, and bloody – worked," leading Jordan to arrest more than a thousand fedayeen and stepped up its patrolling of the border.[5]
Following the attack, the Arab Legion deployed soldiers on the border segment near Qibya to stop further infiltrations and deter further Israeli incursions. There was a brief overall reduction in incursions along the border.[citation needed]
After this incident, Israel restricted attacks on civilian targets. Despite the U.S. request that those involved be brought to account, Sharon was not prosecuted. The independence of Unit 101 was cancelled and several weeks later it was dismantled altogether.[31]
Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon's words to the General Staff in July 1954 were, "Guys, you have to understand [that] there can be the greatest and most successful military operation, and it will turn into a political failure, meaning eventually a military failure as well. I'll give a simple example: Qibya."[32]
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.
Commando Unit 101 was a sayeret (commando) unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), founded and commanded by Ariel Sharon on orders from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in August 1953. They were armed with non-standard weapons and tasked with carrying out retribution operations across the state's borders—in particular, establishing small unit maneuvers, activation and insertion tactics.
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) during the 1956 Sinai War, and as Defense Minister during the Six-Day War in 1967, he became a worldwide fighting symbol of the new state of Israel.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. They formally ended the hostilities of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and also demarcated the Green Line, which separated Arab-controlled territory from Israel until the latter's victory in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.
Moshe Sharett was the second prime minister of Israel and the country’s first foreign minister. He signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was a principal negotiator in the cease-fire agreements that concluded the 1948 War of Independence. Beginning in 1933, he headed the political department of the Jewish Agency. He also founded the Jewish Brigade, which fought with the British Army during World War II.
Meir Har-Zion was an Israeli military commando.
Palestinian return to Israel refers to the movement of Palestinians back into the territory of present Israel.
The 1952 raid on Beit Jala was a part of the reprisal operations that were carried out by Israel in response to Arab fedayeen attacks from across the Green Line. It involved an Israeli incursion into Beit Jala, a town in the Jordanian-annexed West Bank, on 6 January 1952, after which three houses were rigged with explosives and subsequently blown up; the attack killed seven civilian residents. After the attack, the perpetrators left leaflets at the site that were written in Arabic and explained the nature of the killings as a "penalty" for the earlier rape and murder of an Israeli Jewish girl by Palestinian Arab infiltrators, who were supposedly locals of Beit Jala, in the neighbourhood of Bayit VeGan in Jerusalem.
The 1949–1956 Palestinian expulsions were a continuation of the 1948 expulsion and flight of Palestinian Arabs from Israeli-controlled territory that occurred after the signing of the 1949 ceasefire agreements. This period of the exodus was characterised predominantly by forced expulsion during the consolidation of the state of Israel and the growing tension along ceasefire lines that ultimately lead to the 1956 Suez Crisis.
The Ma'ale Akrabim massacre, known in English as the Scorpions Pass Massacre, was an attack on an Israeli passenger bus, carried out on 17 March 1954, in the middle of the day. Eleven passengers were shot dead by the attackers who ambushed and boarded the bus. One passenger died 32 years later of his injuries, in a state of paralysis and partial consciousness. Four passengers survived, two of whom had been injured by the gunmen.
Reprisal operations were raids carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the 1950s and 1960s in response to frequent fedayeen attacks during which armed Arab militants infiltrated Israel from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. Most of the reprisal operations followed raids that resulted in Israeli fatalities. The goal of these operations – from the perspective of Israeli officials – was to create deterrence and prevent future attacks. Two other factors behind the raids were restoring public morale and training newly formed army units. A number of these operations involved attacking villages and Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, including the 1953 Qibya massacre.
Events in the year 1956 in Israel.
Events in the year 1955 in Israel.
Events in the year 1954 in Israel.
Events in the year 1953 in Israel.
The Yehud attack was an attack on a civilian house in the village of Yehud carried out by a Palestinian fedayeen squad on 12 October 1953. Three Israeli Jewish civilians, a mother and her infant children, were killed in the attack.
Operation Black Arrow was an Israeli military operation carried out in Gaza on 28 February 1955. The operation targeted the Egyptian Army. Thirty-eight Egyptian soldiers were killed during the operation as were eight Israelis.
Operation Olive Leaves also known as Operation Kinneret was an Israeli reprisal operation undertaken on December 10–11, 1955, against fortified Syrian emplacements near the north-eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee. The raid was an unprompted attack. The successful operation resulted in the destruction of the Syrian emplacements. The Syrians also sustained fifty-four killed in action. Another thirty were taken prisoner. There were six IDF fatalities.
The Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency was an armed cross-border conflict, which peaked between 1949 and 1956, involving Israel and Palestinian militants, mainly based in the Gaza Strip, under the nominal control of the All-Palestine Protectorate – a Palestinian client-state of Egypt declared in October 1948, which became the focal point of the Palestinian fedayeen activity. The conflict was parallel to the Palestinian infiltration phenomenon. Hundreds were killed in the course of the conflict, which declined after the 1956 Suez War.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the military forces of the State of Israel, has on several occasions been involved in incidents that resulted in accusations of misconduct or potential breaches of international law. In some instances, initial official statements or denials were later revised following internal investigations, which subsequently acknowledged wrongdoing or provided more clarity on events. This article documents such instances, emphasizing the timeline from initial denial to subsequent acknowledgment.
↑ Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 258–9.
↑ Avi Shlaim (2001). The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company. p.91. ISBN0-393-32112-6. The Qibya massacre unleashed against Israel a storm of international protest of unprecedented severity in the country's short history.
↑ Commander E H Hutchison USNR "Violent Truce: A Military Observer Looks at the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1951–1955" Chapter XI A Survey of the Whole Conflict p. 90-100
↑ Commander E H Hutchison USNR "Violent Truce: A Military Observer Looks at the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1951–1955" (Acting Chairman of the HJKIMAC), Appendix B
↑ Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York, 1981, pp. 48–50):
↑ In Sharett's diary we read: (1)'I told Lavon that this [attack] will be a grave error, and recalled, citing various precedents, that it was never proved that reprisal actions serve their declared purpose. Lavon smiled ... and kept to his own idea.... Ben Gurion, he said, didn't share my view.' (14 October 1953, p.37) (2) 'I must underline that when I opposed the action I didn't even remotely suspect such a bloodbath. I thought that I was opposing one of those actions which have become a routine in the past. Had I even remotely suspected that such a massacre was to be held, I would have raised real hell. (16 October 1953, p. 44)' cited Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism, AAUG Press, Belmont, Massachusetts, 3rd ed.1986.
↑ Morris, Benny (1993) Israel's Border Wars, 1949 – 1956. Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War. Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-827850-0. Page 246.
↑ Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. Ebook edition. London: Profile Books, 2020, 175.
↑ Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, A history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881–2001, First Vintage books, 2001. p. 279. "After Qibya the IDF switched from civilian to military targets. Arab civilian casualties declined markedly, reducing Western condemnation of "indiscriminate" Israeli reprisals. But the sorties increased in size and firepower: Many more troops and guns were needed to conquer a well-fortified military camp or police fort than to overrun a village."
↑ Gil-li Vardia (2008). "'Pounding Their Feet': Israeli Military Culture as Reflected in Early IDF Combat History". Journal of Strategic Studies. 31 (2): 295–324. doi:10.1080/01402390801940476. S2CID155047014.
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Israel Defense Forces Ariel Sharon 
