Qibya massacre
Encyclopedia
The Qibya massacre, also known as the Qibya incident, occurred in October 1953 when Israel
i troops under Ariel Sharon
attacked the village of Qibya
in the West Bank
. Sixty-nine Palestinian Arab
s, two thirds of them women and children were killed. Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed.
The act was condemned by the U.S. State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. 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
.
The operation was codenamed Operation Shoshana by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). It was carried out by two Israeli units at night: a paratroop company and Unit 101
, a special forces unit of the IDF.
. Along the 1949 armistice line
, infiltrations, armed or otherwise, were frequent from both sides. Many infiltrations from Palestinian territory in the West Bank
consisted of unarmed Palestinian refugees attempting to rejoin their families, and of smugglers trying to bring in contraband for Israeli markets, though armed marauding also was common. 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. According to some Israeli sources, between June 1949 and the end of 1952, a total of 57 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by Palestinian infiltrators from The West Bank and Jordan. The Israeli death toll for the first nine months of 1953 was 32. Over roughly the same time (November 1950-November 1953), the Mixed Armistice Commission
condemned Israeli raids 44 times. For the same period, 1949–1953, Jordan maintained that it alone suffered 629 killed and injured from Israeli incursions and cross-border bombings. UN sources for the period, based on the documentation at General Bennike's disposal (prepared by Commander E H Hutchison USNR), lower both estimates
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, Rantis
, Qalqiliya, Khirbet al-Deir
, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna
, Wadi Fukin
, Idhna
, and Surif
being the most notable examples. Meanwhile, Palestinian guerilla raids into Israel continued. Over a two-week period in late May and early June, four successive raids by Palestinian fedayeen
caused 9 casualties in Israel, at Beit Arif
, Beit Nabala, Tirat Yehuda
and Kfar Hess
. which greatly concerned both governments.
The specific incident which the Israeli government used to justify the assault on Qibya occurred on October 12, 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 kilometres (6 mi) inside of the Green Line
. The attack, thought to have originated from Qibya, initially drew a sharp rebuke to Jordan from the Mixed Armistice Commission. The Israeli government immediately claimed that the murders 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 bloodhound
s to cross over from Israel to track down the Yahud attackers". On the other hand, some weeks later, while assisting a United Nations and Jordanian team following the tracks of the person(s) who on November 1 had blown up a water-line in Palestinian 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. 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 October the 14th. 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.
According to the former Time correspondent to Jerusalem, Donald Neff
, the decisive calculation was as follows:
gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion
. The Israeli elected governing cabinet was not informed, and though Foreign Affairs
Minister
Moshe 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.
to the UN Security Council, the raid at Qibya took place on the evening of October 14, 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
. 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.
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
. As the Israelis approached the village, residents were seen fleeing, and it was incorrectly assumed that all villagers had fled. The Israeli troops simultaneously entered the village from three sides. IDF soldiers encountered resistance, and killed 10-12 soldiers and guards defending the village. An Israeli soldier was lightly wounded. Soldiers shouted warnings into homes and chased away any civilians who were discovered, but did not thoroughly inspect them. Many civilians remained in their homes and hid, and were not seen by the soldiers. Military engineers then dynamited dozens of buildings across the village,. At dawn, the operation was considered complete, and the Israelis returned home.
A total of 42 villagers were killed, and 15 wounded, many of them having been hidden in their houses when they were blown up.
Ariel Sharon
, who led the attack, 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'. Sharon said 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) he wrote:
UN observers noted that they saw bodies near doorways, and bullet hits on the doors of demolished houses, and concluded that residents may have been forced to stay in their homes due to heavy fire.
Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property". Post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.
The attack was universally condemned by the international community. The U.S. State Department issued a bulletin on October 18, 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." The State Department described the raid as "shocking", and used the occasion to confirm publicly that economic aid to Israel had been (previously) suspended. The aid, Israel had been informed on September 18, had been "deferred" until Israel saw fit to cooperate with the United Nations, in relation to its water diversion work near Bnot Ya'akov Bridge
in the Demilitarized Zone; the UN Security Council subsequently adopted Resolution 100
on October 27, 1953.
On November 24, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 101
and expressed the "strongest possible censure of this action".
summed up, in his diary on 16 October, the opinion that:
Notwithstanding Sharett's advice that broadcasting this version would make Israel appear patently "ridiculous", on October 19 Ben-Gurion
publicly asserted that the raid
had been carried out by Israeli civilians.
On Israeli Radio that same day, he addressed the nation in the following terms:
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.
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 all together.
Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon's words to the GS -'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'
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i troops under Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
attacked the village of Qibya
Qibya
Qibya is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, located northwest of Ramallah and exactly north of the large Israeli city of Modi'in. It is part of the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, and according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it had a population of approximately 4,901 in...
in the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
. Sixty-nine Palestinian Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s, two thirds of them women and children were killed. Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed.
The act was condemned by the U.S. State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. 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
1949 Armistice Agreements
The 1949 Armistice Agreements are a set of agreements signed during 1949 between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The agreements ended the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and established armistice lines between Israeli forces and the forces in...
.
The operation was codenamed Operation Shoshana by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). It was carried out by two Israeli units at night: a paratroop company and Unit 101
Unit 101
Unit 101 was a special forces unit of the Israeli Defense Forces , founded and commanded by Ariel Sharon on orders from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in August 1953...
, a special forces unit of the IDF.
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 Agreements1949 Armistice Agreements
The 1949 Armistice Agreements are a set of agreements signed during 1949 between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The agreements ended the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and established armistice lines between Israeli forces and the forces in...
. Along the 1949 armistice line
Green Line (Israel)
Green Line refers to the demarcation lines set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbours after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War...
, infiltrations, armed or otherwise, were frequent from both sides. Many infiltrations from Palestinian territory in the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
consisted of unarmed Palestinian refugees attempting to rejoin their families, and of smugglers trying to bring in contraband for Israeli markets, though armed marauding also was common. 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
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
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. According to some Israeli sources, between June 1949 and the end of 1952, a total of 57 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by Palestinian infiltrators from The West Bank and Jordan. The Israeli death toll for the first nine months of 1953 was 32. Over roughly the same time (November 1950-November 1953), the Mixed Armistice Commission
Mixed Armistice Commissions
The Mixed Armistice Commissions is an organisation for monitoring the ceasefire along the lines set by the General Armistice Agreements. It was composed of United Nations Military Observers and was part of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization peacekeeping force in the Middle East...
condemned Israeli raids 44 times. For the same period, 1949–1953, Jordan maintained that it alone suffered 629 killed and injured from Israeli incursions and cross-border bombings. UN sources for the period, based on the documentation at General Bennike's disposal (prepared by Commander E H Hutchison USNR), lower both estimates
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
Latrun
Latrun is a strategic hilltop in the Ayalon Valley in Israel overlooking the road to Jerusalem. It is located 25 kilometers west of Jerusalem and 14 kilometers southeast of Ramla.-Etymology:...
, Falameh, Rantis
Rantis
Rantis is a Palestinian town in the West Bank, located in the northwestern Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, 33 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it had a population of 2,900 in mid-year 2006...
, Qalqiliya, Khirbet al-Deir
Khirbet al-Deir
Khirbet al-Deir is a Palestinian town located ten kilometers south of Bethlehem.The town is in the Bethlehem Governorate central West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of over 1,564 in mid-year 2006....
, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna
Qatanna
Qatanna is a Palestinian town in the central West Bank part of the Jerusalem Governorate, located twelve kilometers northwest of Jerusalem. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of approximately 7,500 inhabitants in 2006...
, Wadi Fukin
Wadi Fukin
Wadi Fukin is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, eight kilometers southwest of Bethlehem in the Bethlehem Governorate. The village is located between the Green Line and the Israeli West Bank barrier. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Wadi Fukin had a population of...
, Idhna
Idhna
Idhna is a Palestinian town in the southern West Bank, located in the Hebron Governorate, 13 kilometers west of Hebron and about one kilometer east of the Green Line. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of approximately 19,012 inhabitants in...
, and Surif
Surif
Surif is a Palestinian town in the Hebron Governorate located 25 km northwest of the city of Hebron. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics census, Surif had a population of 13,365 in 2007. The population is entirely Muslim....
being the most notable examples. Meanwhile, Palestinian guerilla raids into Israel continued. Over a two-week period in late May and early June, four successive raids by Palestinian fedayeen
Fedayeen
Fedayeen is a term used to describe several distinct militant groups and individuals in West Asia at different times in history. It is sometimes used colloquially to refer to suicide squads, especially those who are not bombers.-Overview:...
caused 9 casualties in Israel, at Beit Arif
Beit Arif
Beit Arif is a moshav in central Israel. Located near Shoham, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hevel Modi'in Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 724....
, Beit Nabala, Tirat Yehuda
Tirat Yehuda
Tirat Yehuda is a moshav in central Israel. Located near Yehud and Ben Gurion International Airport, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hevel Modi'in Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 859....
and Kfar Hess
Kfar Hess
Kfar Hess is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain to the south-east of Tel Mond and covering 3,900 dunams, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lev HaSharon Regional Council...
. which greatly concerned both governments.
The specific incident which the Israeli government used to justify the assault on Qibya occurred on October 12, 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
Yehud
Yehud is a city in the Center District in Israel that is part of the joint municipality of Yehud-Monosson. In 2007, Yehud's population was approximately 25,600 .- History :...
, some 10 kilometres (6 mi) inside of the Green Line
Green Line (Israel)
Green Line refers to the demarcation lines set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbours after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War...
. The attack, thought to have originated from Qibya, initially drew a sharp rebuke to Jordan from the Mixed Armistice Commission. The Israeli government immediately claimed that the murders 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
Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett on 15 October 1894, died 7 July 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel , serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.-Early life:...
said later that "the Commander of the Jordan Legion
Arab Legion
The Arab Legion was the regular army of Transjordan and then Jordan in the early part of the 20th century.-Creation:...
, Glubb Pasha, had asked for police bloodhound
Bloodhound
The Bloodhound is a large breed of dog which, while originally bred to hunt deer and wild boar, was later bred specifically to track human beings. It is a scenthound, tracking by smell, as opposed to a sighthound, which tracks using vision. It is famed for its ability to discern human odors even...
s to cross over from Israel to track down the Yahud attackers". On the other hand, some weeks later, while assisting a United Nations and Jordanian team following the tracks of the person(s) who on November 1 had blown up a water-line in Palestinian 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
Mount Scopus
Mount Scopus , جبل المشهد , جبل الصوانة) is a mountain in northeast Jerusalem. In the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Mount Scopus became a UN protected Jewish exclave within Jordanian-occupied territory until the Six-Day War in 1967...
and prosecute their investigation. 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 October the 14th. The Chief of Staff of the Arab Legion in Amman
Amman
Amman is the capital of Jordan. It is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Greater Amman area has a population of 2,842,629 as of 2010. The population of Amman is expected to jump from 2.8 million to almost...
flew to Jerusalem to ask that no retaliatory actions take place that might compromise Jordanian investigations underway on their side of the border.
According to the former Time correspondent to Jerusalem, Donald Neff
Donald Neff
Donald Neff is an American journalist. He spent 16 years in service for Time Magazine, and is a former Time Magazine Bureau Chief in Israel. He also worked for the Washington Star....
, the decisive calculation was as follows:
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.Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon
Pinhas Lavon
Pinhas Lavon was an Israeli politician, minister and labor leader, best known for the Lavon Affair.-Early life:Lavon was born as Pinhas Lubianiker in Kopychyntsi in what was previously Galicia in Austria-Hungary . He studied law at the University of Lviv, where he organized Histadrut organizations...
gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
. The Israeli elected governing cabinet was not informed, and though Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
Minister
Foreign minister
A Minister of Foreign Affairs, or foreign minister, is a cabinet minister who helps form the foreign policy of a sovereign state. The foreign minister is often regarded as the most senior ministerial position below that of the head of government . It is often granted to the deputy prime minister in...
Moshe 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.
The attack
According to the Mixed Armistice Commission report, approved on the afternoon immediately following the operation, and delivered by Major General Vagn BennikeVagn Bennike
Vagn Bennike was an army engineer and demolitions expert. During the occupation of Denmark during World War II he worked in the Danish resistance movement in Jutland, where he was attached to the army's illegal tasks unit...
to the UN Security Council, the raid at Qibya took place on the evening of October 14, 1953 at around 9.30 pm, and was taken by roughly half a battalion
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...
strength of soldiers from the Israeli regular army. Later sources state the force consisted of 130 IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
troops of whom a third came from Unit 101
Unit 101
Unit 101 was a special forces unit of the Israeli Defense Forces , founded and commanded by Ariel Sharon on orders from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in August 1953...
. 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.
The attack began with a mortar
Mortar (weapon)
A mortar is an indirect fire weapon that fires explosive projectiles known as bombs at low velocities, short ranges, and high-arcing ballistic trajectories. It is typically muzzle-loading and has a barrel length less than 15 times its caliber....
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
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
roads to prevent Jordanian forces from intervening. At the same time at least 25 mortar shells were fired into the neighbouring village of Budrus
Budrus
Budrus is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located 31 kilometers Northwest of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics , the town had a population of 1,399 inhabitants in 2007."Budrus" is Arabic for "Peter" and in...
. As the Israelis approached the village, residents were seen fleeing, and it was incorrectly assumed that all villagers had fled. The Israeli troops simultaneously entered the village from three sides. IDF soldiers encountered resistance, and killed 10-12 soldiers and guards defending the village. An Israeli soldier was lightly wounded. Soldiers shouted warnings into homes and chased away any civilians who were discovered, but did not thoroughly inspect them. Many civilians remained in their homes and hid, and were not seen by the soldiers. Military engineers then dynamited dozens of buildings across the village,. At dawn, the operation was considered complete, and the Israelis returned home.
A total of 42 villagers were killed, and 15 wounded, many of them having been hidden in their houses when they were blown up.
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
, who led the attack, 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'. Sharon said 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) he 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.
UN observers noted that they saw bodies near doorways, and bullet hits on the doors of demolished houses, and concluded that residents may have been forced to stay in their homes due to heavy fire.
Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property". Post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.
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.The attack was universally condemned by the international community. The U.S. State Department issued a bulletin on October 18, 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." The State Department described the raid as "shocking", and used the occasion to confirm publicly that economic aid to Israel had been (previously) suspended. The aid, Israel had been informed on September 18, had been "deferred" until Israel saw fit to cooperate with the United Nations, in relation to its water diversion work near Bnot Ya'akov Bridge
Bnot Ya'akov Bridge
Bnot Ya'akov Bridge is a bridge across the Jordan River on Highway 91, straddling the border between Israel proper and the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights...
in the Demilitarized Zone; the UN Security Council subsequently adopted Resolution 100
United Nations Security Council Resolution 100
United Nations Security Council Resolution 100, adopted unanimously on October 27, 1953, after receiving a report from the Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine the Council found it desirable that work in the demilitarized zone should be suspended...
on October 27, 1953.
On November 24, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 101
United Nations Security Council Resolution 101
United Nations Security Council Resolution 101, adopted on November 24, 1953, noting reports by the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine the Council found that the retaliatory action taken by Israeli forces at Qibya on October 14–15 and all such action constitute a violation...
and expressed the "strongest possible censure of this action".
Israeli reaction
The international outcry caused by the operation required a formal reply by Israel. Intense discussions took place, and Moshe SharettMoshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett on 15 October 1894, died 7 July 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel , serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.-Early life:...
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)
Notwithstanding Sharett's advice that broadcasting this version would make Israel appear patently "ridiculous", on October 19 Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
publicly asserted that the raid
Raid (military)
Raid, also known as depredation, is a military tactic or operational warfare mission which has a specific purpose and is not normally intended to capture and hold terrain, but instead finish with the raiding force quickly retreating to a previous defended position prior to the enemy forces being...
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, he addressed the nation in the following terms:
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.
Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement.A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81...
, founder and editor of the magazine HaOlam HaZeh
Haolam Hazeh
HaOlam HaZeh was a weekly news magazine published in Israel until 1993.The magazine was founded in 1937 under the name Tesha BaErev but was renamed HaOlam HaZeh in 1946...
, relates that he had both his hands broken when he was ambushed for criticizing the massacre at Qibya in his newspaper.
Results
Following the attack, the Arab Legion forces deployed 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.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 all together.
Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon's words to the GS -'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'
Sources
- Benny MorrisBenny MorrisBenny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
, Righteous Victims, p. 278 - Ze'ev SchiffZe'ev SchiffZe'ev Schiff was an Israeli journalist and military correspondent for Ha'aretz....
, Israel Army Lexicon
External links
- UNSC resolution on Qibya operation, text at JVL. United Nations text in PDF.
- Minutes of the United Nations Security Council regarding Qibya S/636/Rev.1 16 November 1953
- 1953 Qibya and other retribution acts carried out by Unit 101 under the command of Ariel Sharon - from Ariel Sharon's Life Story, a biography.
- Arab-Israeli Infiltration, list of similar operations.
- Commander E H Hutchison USNR “Violent Truce: A Military Observer Looks at the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1951-1955”