The Qibya massacre was carried out in October 1953 by Israeli troops on the Jordanian West Bank village of that name. The village name is sometimes spelt Kibya. The incursion itself was called Operation Shoshana or the Qibya Operation.

The assault on, and subsequent massacre at Qibya, was carried out by two Israeli units: a paratroop company and Unit 101, a special forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that conducted raids against Arabs. Over 60 Palestinian Arabs were killed, many houses, a school, and a mosque were demolished. The act was condemned by the US State department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. As a result, aid was temporarily suspended to Israel.

Events leading up to the attack

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 armistice in 1949. On the Israeli-Jordian border lines, infiltrations, armed or otherwise, were not infrequent from both sides. Many infiltrations from Jordanian territory consisted of unarmed refugees from the Nakba attempting to rejoin their families,^[1] and of smugglers trying to bring in contraband for Israeli markets, though armed marauding also was not uncommon. Half of Jordan's prison population at the time consisted of people arrested for attempting to return to, or illegally enter, Israeli-held territory, but the number of complaints filed by Israel over infiltrations from Jordan show a considerable reduction, from 233 in the first nine months of 1952, to 172 for the same period in 1953, immediately prior to the massacre. This marked reduction was in good part the result of increased Jordian efficiency in patrolling its borders.^[2]. According to some Israeli sources, between June 1949 and the end of 1952, a total of 57 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by infiltrators from Jordan. The Israeli death toll for the first 9 months of 1953 was 32.^[3]. Over roughly the same time (November 1950-November 1953), the Mixed Armistice Commission condemned Israeli military infiltrations and aggressions 44 times.^[4]. For the same period, 1949-1953, Jordan maintained that it alone suffered 629 killed and injured from Israeli incursions and cross-border bombings.^[5]. UN sources for the period, based on the documentation at General Bennike's disposal, lower both estimates^[6]

Over the year leading up to the massacre,Israeli armed forces and civilians had conducted many punitive expeditions, causing much destruction of infrastructure and crops and many civilian casualties, against numerous Jordanian villages, Latrun, Falameh, Rantis, Qalqiliya, Khirbet El Dier, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna, Wadi Fukin, Idna, and Surif being the most notable examples.^[7]. Over a two week period in late May and early June, four successive incursions by Jordanians caused 9 casualties in Israel, at Beit Arif, Beit Nabala, Tirat Yehuda and Kfar Hess.^[8] which greatly concerned both governments. The specific incident which was to justify the assault on Qibya occurred on October 12 1953, when a Jewish mother, Suzanne Kinyas, and her two children were killed by a grenade thrown into their house in the Israeli town of Yehud, some 10 kilometers inside Israel's border. The attack initially drew a sharp rebuke to Jordan from the Mixed Armistice Commission.^[9]. The Israeli government immediately claimed that the murders were perpetrated by Jordanian infiltrators, a charge queried by Jordanian officials, who were sceptical, 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" ^[10]. On the other hand, some weeks later, while assisting a United Nations and Jordanian team following the tracks of the person(s) who blew up on November 1 a water-line in Jordanian territory feeding the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, tracks that lead 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^[11].For the first time, Israel accepted Jordan's offer of assistance and the tracks of the perpetrator were traced to a point 1400 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.^[12] 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^[13].

It was not the Israeli government which decided to carry out a retaliatory operation against the village of Qibya in the West Bank, though no evidence pointed to it as the source of the crime. Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon 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.^[14]

The attack

According to the Mixed Armistice Commission report, approved on the afternoon immediately following the massacre, 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. It began with a mortar barrage on the village until Israeli troops reached the outskirts of the village, where Bangalore torpedoes were employed to breach defences. Landmines were laid out on roads to prevent Jordanian troops from joining the fight. At the same time at least 25 mortar shells were fired into the neighbouring village of Budrus. In the assault, simultaneously from three sides, forty one dwellings were blown up, plus the school village. 42 villagers were murdered, and 15 wounded. The UN observers noted that:-

'Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them.^[15]

At dawn the operation was considered complete and the Israeli troops returned home.

Later reports suggest that forty-five houses had been destroyed, as well as the mosque, the school, and the water reservoir, and that the total casualty rate ran to some 60 people. The Israeli government initially claimed that the killing had been carried out by Jewish civilians living near the border, but later admitted that it had been carried out by military forces.

The IDF claimed that the plan was to ambush Arab Legion forces in the area, by destroying some houses as a decoy. The original orders issued by the Israeli General Staff were relatively limited in scale, instructing the forces to 'carry out an attack … with the aim of temporary occupation and the demolition of houses, and not to harm the inhabitants' However, going down the command chain, before they reached the unit's commanders, the orders changed to demand 'maximum killing'^[16]

However 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:

"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."

Despite these later claims, Israeli New Historian Benny Morris showed by a close consultation of original documents of the time 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^[17]

International Reaction

The attack and massacre were universally condemned. On October 18, 1953, the U.S. State Department issued a bulletin 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."^[18] The United States temporarily suspended economic aid to Israel.

On November 24 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 101 and expressed the "strongest possible censure of this action"

An emergency meeting of the Mixed Armistice Commission 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.^[19]

Israeli Reaction

The international outcry caused by the massacre required a formal reply by Israel. Intense discussions took place, and Moshe Sharett summed up, in his diary on the 16th. of 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)'^[20]

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.'^[21]

Uri Avnery, founder and editor of the magazine Haolam Hazeh, had both hands broken when he was ambushed for criticizing the massacre at Qibya in his newspaper.^[22]

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 direct targeting of civilians. Despite the US request that those involved be brought to account, Sharon was not prosecuted and went on to become a Prime Minister of Israel. The independence of Unit 101 was cancelled but it continued to participate in cross-border attacks against military targets as a part of the 202nd Paratroop Brigade.^[23]

See also

• Unit 101
• List of the UN resolutions concerning Israel
• Command responsibility

References

External links

• UNSC resolution on Qibya operation, text at JVL. United Nations text in PDF.
• 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.

Sources

• [Morris] Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 278
• [Lexicon] Ze'ev Shchiff, Israel Army Lexicon
• http://www.etc.se/radikala/templates/template_89.asp?number=14365