Qibya massacre

Qibya massacre also the Kibya massacre occurred in October 1953 in the Jordanian village of Qibya twenty miles northwest of Jerusalem. A 600-man Israeli battalion led by future prime minister Ariel Sharon surrounded the tiny Palestinian village, bombarded them with artillery fire four two hours and then entered, killing every man, woman, and child to be found. They then began to kill the cattle. They dynamited 42 homes, a school and a mosque. Sixty-nine Palestinian Arabs, two thirds of them women and children were killed. Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed. The Israelis laughed and joked after the slaughter.

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.

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 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. 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. 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'.

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 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".

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)

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.

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, 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.

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'

See also

• List of Zionist crimes

External links

• Israel: Massacre at Kibya
• 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”