Category: Chapter2

Khan Yunis and Rafah Massacres:

During the tripartite (British–French-Israeli) aggression against Egypt, marks the annual anniversary of the brutal atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinians in Khan Yunis refugee camp. Some 250 Palestinians were killed in cold blood in this massacre. A few days later, the Israeli army committed another terrorist atrocity in the same refugee camp, where 270 Palestinians were slaughtered.

This tragedy followed the Kufr Qasim massacre that had been perpetrated four days earlier, and took away the lives of 49 people, and 23 days after the Qalqilya onslaught. In fact, and on the same day of Israel’s brutal attack on Khan Yunis, the Zionists also killed more than 100 Palestinians in Rafah refugee camp.

Eye Witness

Hajj Abdul Ra’ouf Badran (103 years old), a contemporary witness of the Palestinian century–old catastrophes and displacement, recalls the initial phases of the massacre. The Palestinians there refused to surrender to the Israeli occupation forces which conquered Sinai, Rafah and Gaza. Instead they took to resistance and defense of the city. Badran also recalls the heavy bombardment of the residential quarters of the city by the Israeli war planes and tanks to silence the resistance. Dozens of martyrs fell, and many people were wounded as a result, and a new wave of horror and panic emerged among the inhabitants. Shivering under the heavy, melancholic reminiscences of the past, Hajj Badran said that’s why the Israeli soldiers conquered the city and started brutal retaliatory actions. He added that it never occurred to the inhabitants that the Israelis would be that brutal. They gathered our men and youth, led them to public squares, and mercilessly shot them down. According to Dr Mohammed Al Farrawho wrote a book about Khan Yunis entitled Khan Younis – Past and Present, the Israeli occupation forces intruded into private Palestinian residences, and shot indiscriminately at men and youths in front of all other members of the family. More than 500 Palestinians in Gaza were killed this way, to say nothing of other serious casualties.

3-12-1- Sheikh Omari Massacre

Abdul Majeed (Abu Muhammed), was 13 years old when the Sheikh Omari slaughter took place. He remembers how the Israeli soldiers attacked their home in the Qarrar residencial area, and led him with his elder brother Abdul Raheem, and other young people to Sheikh Omari. Abdul Majeed said that an Israeli soldier asked him to stay away from the group and go back home, only to see the Israeli soldiers shoot at the almost 50-members of Palestinian youth for no reason.

• Some of them died, others pretended to be dead, or tried to escape the horrible scene. Abu Mohammed was obviously very moved in recalling the event. Having heard the story from her trembling son before, Um Al Abed unconsciously hurried to the massacre scene. Her elder son had already emitted his last breath. Um Al Abed still remembers, with deep furrows lining her face, that she was encouraged to meet the last wish of the wounded and fetch them water, adding that the Palestinians then soon moved the corpses and buried them, while they sent the wounded for treatment.

3-12-2– A Criminal plan

• A survivor of the slaughter, Abdul Qader Al Astal, said the Israeli soldiers started to gather the youth of the village in the morning. As the number approached 50, we were ordered to align in one row. The soldiers then told us that they would kill the first man in the row and the next two would move him to the road-side. This criminal plan was immediately carried out. After 10 executions had already been carried out, another Israeli patrol arrived to the scene and all of the Israeli soldiers left for Sheikh Omari area. They assaulted Diwan Al Fayyad and killed all of its family members. Twenty-Five Palestinians were killed in that onslaught, among them were Abdul Raheem Abdul Ghafour, Abdallah Fayyad, Moh’d Fayyad, Abdul Azeez Fayyad, Abdul Razzaq Fayyad, Saleem Al Shami, Salman Al Shami. Al Astal believes it’s high time that the file of this massacre was opened and its perpetrators tried and punished. Hence he calls upon appropriate lawyers to take up this task.

3-12-3– Martyrs are swimming in their blood

• On his part, another survivor of this slaughter, Abu Yousif Aashur (75 years old), described the war crimes committed by the Israeli soldiers in another venue of brutal atrocities, namely in Khan Yunis refugee camp, where 30 Palestinians were killed and many injured, including himself. Aashur still suffers from that wound. He recalls that the Israeli soldiers conquered the area, broke down the doors and evacuated the houses of all those 15-years old and He said that they then were escorted to the Club area, ordered to stand in lines, and were shot at from all directions. Deeply distressed as he spoke, Aashur said he fell on the ground out of terror and pretended to be dead as he was certain the Israelis were determined to leave the area drowned in blood.

3-12-4– A Call to investigate the crime

• Aashur raises his voice along with those other voices demanding aninvestigation into this crime and the punishment of the perpetrators. He also noted that, now and then, he hears of followup efforts of this issue, but these are neglected as soon as the anniversary is passed. Thus he underlines the fact that a genuine and sincere effort is duly needed to ensure the rights of the martyrs and wounded relatives are observed, especially that such issues can be raised under internal law at international courts.

Dr Kamal Al Astal, chairman of the Department of Political Sciences, commented on this issue, and said that massacres are crimes of war and are punished under international law and in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention. He said that it is the right of the Palestinian people to demand the setting up of an international committee to investigate this massacre where hundreds of civilians were victimized at the hands of the Israeli occupying army. It is also their right to demand the punishment of the perpetrators of the current and on-going slaughter and brutal atrocities committed against the Palestinian people.

Kufr Qasim Massacre:

• In its preparation for the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956, Israel undertook very comprehensive restrictive measures against its Arab citizens, under the pretext of ensuring internal security during that aggression.
• On October 28, 1956, a battalion of the Border Guards was joined to one of the Israeli army divisions.
• Early in the morning of October 29, the commander of the Israeli army in the central region acquainted all aids in his jurisdiction of the policy that should be pursued with the Arab citizens of Israel.

He stressed that the implementation of the military operations in the south (i.e. attacks on the Gaza Strip and the Sinai) requires full stability and calm in the Arab concentrated areas inside Israel. A Lt. Colonel asked for authorization to impose curfew on the Arab villages. The demand was okayed, and immediately implemented in the villages of Kufr Qasim, Kufr Barra, Jaljulya, Tierah, Taibeh, Qalansua, Beir Al Sikka, Abton … etc.

• The military order concerned said that no citizen is allowed to leave his home during the curfew. Whoever violates the order will be shot. No one to be jailed—in other words, take no prisoners.

The Lt. Colonel said the curfew would be very restrictive, and strictly implemented, not by imprisonment, but by shooting. When asked about the case of a citizen returning home from the nearby work location, and uninformed of the curfew, the Lt. Colonel replied: “I don’t want any emotions.. God bless his soul.”

In a special meeting dedicated to the instruction of these military orders and regulations, major Milinki told his staff that they should shoot anybody emerging outside his home; no one should be taken prisoner. If it happened, and some people were killed, then that would be a relief of the curfew in the following nights.

• Israeli military squads were then deployed in the Arab villages of the triangle region (in the Galilee). A distinctive force was directed to Kufr Qasim under the command of Lt. Jabriel Dahhan. He divided it into four groups. The groups took their positions at the village’s entrances and inside its territory, too.
• At 16:00 hours of that date, and only 30 minutes before the curfew was to be declared, a sergeant of the Border Guards summoned the village mayor, Qasim Wade’e Ahmed Sarsour, and informed him of the curfew order. The mayor informed the sergeant of the 400 workers still in their fields and work outside the village, saying that it would be impossible to acquaint them with this order in half an hour. The Sergeant promised to allow these workers to return to their homes, and that he and the government would be accountable for that.
• At 17:00 hours, and as the workers and farmers were coming back home from their work and fields, the massacre started. The Israeli soldiers stopped the returning Palestinian workers, who were coming back in-groups and individually, at the entrance of the village, and asked them where they were from. When the answer came ‘from Kufr Qasim’, they were ordered to stand in one line, then the Israeli commander ordered his squad to shoot them by saying: ‘finish them’. In this manner, about 50 Palestinian workers from this village were killed in a period of one hour, including 31 young men, 9 women and 7 kids. The Israeli soldiers then shoved the corpses of the dead and wounded to the roadside.

3-11-1- Field Accounts

• In her description of the massacre a week after its perpetration, an elderly woman from Kufr Qasim, who was called to identify the corpse of her slain husband, said that the Israeli soldiers brought people from Jaljulia to bury the dead haphazardly. Hands, legs and heads actually emerged from under earth.
• Abdul Raheem Easa, who was 15 years old at that time, said in his account of what he had seen of the massacre, that exactly at 17:00 hours as he could remember, the Israeli forces imposed curfew in the triangle region. That was only one minute before aggression was launched against Egypt. The overall atmosphere was tense, and the Arab and Palestinian ‘fedaiyeen’ were taking up military operations against the Israeli army. So Arab villages were subjected to Israel’s military and emergency rule. Even the curfew schedule was deliberately precipitated for some time, though the Israeli authorities knew very well there were many Arab workers and farmers still outside their villages.
• Khader Mahmoud Bader said in his account that he had stopped at the roadside with other three stone crushing laborers when an Israeli soldier asked them where they were from. As he got the answer that they were from Kufr Qasim, he stepped back a little and ordered the Israeli soldiers: ‘finish them’. So they were hailed with fire from all sides, and suddenly some people fell down on him. The soldiers drew nearer, and shot at the Palestinian workers from over the wall. Khader’s cousin appealed to the soldiers to leave him for the sake of his children, but one of them swiftly crushed his head. Khader didn’t feel anything around him, neither could he manage to move forward. He was shot in the legs, two other workers were instantly killed, while the third pretended to be dead. He hid himself among a herd, and managed to reach the village by stealth.

Khader went on to say that he tried to crawl with the help of his hands, but he heard horrible cries all the time. Unexpectedly, he took hold of an olive branch and covered himself with it. The whizzing of bullets and the shouts of the injured continued. The radios in the hands of the Israeli soldiers repeatedly reporting: “We killed 10 Arabs, we killed .. we killed ..”

• Salah Khaleel Easa was 18 years old at that time. In his recollection he said that a truck loaded with many Arab workers came to a military checkpoint. The Israeli soldiers allowed it to pass along. But after few seconds, it was struck with bullets. Salah was monitoring the event from a nearby field. Thirteen Palestinians were killed; many others were injured. Salah himself was hit in the arm and leg. Soon, another group of Arab workers arrived. Salah heard one of the Israeli soldiers shouting the command: ‘finish them’. Some of them fell on the ground. A quarter an hour later, another truck carrying 19 Arab workers came up. They were asked to get off the truck and stand in one line. Then the Israeli soldiers mercilessly shot them down, and removed the corpses. Salah pretended to be dead, so one of the soldiers threw him among the other dead. Calmly and silently, Salah crept to a nearby olive tree, climbed up its huge branch and stayed there until morning. As for Khader Bader, he stayed hidden in an olive tree in that place for three days, then feebly fell down to the ground.
• Citizen Abdul Raheem spoke of the massacre saying he was 17 years old then and used to work on their land. In the evening of that day, he heard firing. Together with others, they all thought it could be border clashes with Jordan. None of them knew of the curfew. Abdul Raheem’s father sent one of his brothers after him. We both came back on that truck which stopped at the military checkpoint that was set up at the village Some Israeli soldiers came up to the truck and started shooting at them. They threw themselves on the ground while the Israelis pelted them with questions about their original villages and where they came from. The soldiers didn’t wait for answers. They immediately ordered the Arab workers to get down from the truck and stand in one line. Suddenly, the commander of the checkpoint ordered his soldiers to ‘Finish them’. Abdul Raheem’s brother was standing behind him, the latter punched the former in the belly. When the Israeli soldiers started shooting, both brothers fell to the ground. The brother continued punching on the belly of Abdul Raheem who was hit in the left leg. The Israeli soldiers passed to check the dead from the living. Abdul Raheem pretended to be dead as one of the soldiers reached him. His injured leg moved a bit, and his brother tried to calm him down, whereas Abdul Raheem wanted, with a hand gesture, to stop him from speaking. The Israeli soldier fired at Abdul Raheem’s hands, and his brother began shouting. They shot him in the head. The bullets went out of the other side. Abdul Raheem’s brother was silent, his hands which were punching his brother’s belly became loose and eventually fell down.
• Half an hour later, a car loaded with Palestinian women arrived. One of them said: “Look, they are there on the ground”. The Israeli soldiers stopped the women at a distance of about 50 meters, and shot them down. As Abdul Raheem awoke, he found himself in the hospital.

3-11-2- A Mock Trial

The on–the-spot-accounts of the Arab citizens who had narrowly escaped the massacre, shook the entire Palestinian and Arab public opinion.

As for Israel, the then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion set up an superficial investigation committee intended to absorb the indignation of the Arab population and public opinion in general. Though late, and only on November 12, 1956,

the Israeli authorities issued a statement that didn’t even mention how many Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli soldiers. The investigation committee recommended, in conclusion of its formal examination of the case, the due trial of the massacre perpetrators, but didn’t publish their names. Moshe Dayan requested that the trial be conducted behind closed sessions. In January 1957, the Kufr Qasim trial was held for 11 Israeli officers and soldiers from the Border Guards, and lasted for two years.

Finally, this theatrical trial issued decisions which were pretentiously tough, and meant to satisfy Arab and world public opinion. It ruled that :

• Major Samuel Milinki be jailed for 17 years for killing 43 Arab citizens from Kufr Qasim;
• Dahhan to be jailed for 15 years for killing 22 Arab citizens;
• soldier Shalom Ofer to be jailed for 15 years for killing 22 Arabs;
• and soldiers Makhloof Harroush and Elyaho Abraham to be jailed for 7 years for killing 22 Arabs each.
• As for Colonel Shadmi, the court fined him 10 Israeli Agors (something like one piaster).

Very shortly afterwards, the convicted Israeli soldiers appealed their sentences to the Supreme Court.

The latter reduced Milinki’s sentence to 14 years, Dahhan’s to 10 years and that of the rest to 3 years in prison.

Then the Israeli armychief of staff, Haim Laskov, slashed the sentences further, and after serving only one year, they were all set free.

Ironically, and exactly three months after his release from jail, Lt Dahhan was appointed by Al Ramleh municipality as an official responsible for Arab issues there.

3-11-3– Memorialization

On the Arab side however, the citizens of Kufr Qasim and all other Palestinian cities, towns and villages, memorialize the martyrs of this horrible massacre annually.

Qalqilya Massacre:

Although the respective UN resolution on the partition of Palestine was already passed, the inhabitants of Qalqilya/Tulkarm Province, precociously felt the Zionist danger. They therefore, took the initiative of building possible defences in their village. They raised funds to buy weapons and ammunitions to defend their land and protect themselves.

In spite of the signed truce, clashes between the Qilqilya citizens and the Zionist enemy continued without interruption. The Israeli Zionist forces never disguised their intention of destroying Qalqilya. That intention was explicitly pronounced by Moshe Dayan in June 1953, when he said that he would level Qalqilya to the ground.

Thus at 21:00 hours of October 10, 1956, an Israeli military detachment, supported by a tank squad, two artillery groups, and about 10 war planes, penetrated the borders, cut off wire communications and laid road mines.

An hour later, the village was assaulted from three directions. Home defences repeatedly forced the aggressors to retreat.

Intuitively, the village inhabitants recognized that their police station was the main target of the aggression. Hence, they fortified it with more militants and other means of power. Soon the Israeli military bombardment intensified with the participation of war planes.

In this unequal battle, the Zionists occupied the police station of the village, and penetrated further into Qalqilya.

The neighboring villages rushed briskly to help, as did a Jordanian army unit that was stationed in the region, but collided with the ground mines. One of its armored cars and two of its transport trucks were blasted.

However, after a brave battle was fought by the local citizens of Qalqilya, the nearby villages and the Jordanian army unit. the aggressors withdrew leaving behind 70 people dead, and untold devastation.

Qibya Massacre:

At 19:30 hrs of October 14, 1953, a 600-man Israeli armed forces division moved, in a premeditated military plan, towards this Palestinian village. They encircled it and subsequently isolated the village from its surrounding neighborhoods. The Israeli aggression started with a heavy and indiscriminate destructive artillery bombing of the residential areas before the attacking forces reached the borderlines, whereas the other part of the Jewish forces headed for the neighboring Arab villages, such as Shuqba, Budrus, Ni’leen, etc. to block any possible rescue.

The Israeli forces also laid down mines on the roads connecting Qibya with its neighbors, and entered the village with heavy firing. The National Guard in the village, led by Captain Mahmoud Abdul Aziz, supported by the entire population of the village, bravely resisted the invasion until they ran out of ammunition. Most of them were killed. The Israeli Military operation lasted to 4:00 a.m. the next day.

On their withdrawal, the Israeli aggressors left behind 56 houses, the mosque, the school, and the water reservoir—all demolished, 67 men, women and children dead, and a number of injured. Whole families were entirely wiped out in this onslaught; among those killed was the 12-member family of Abdul Mun’im Qadous ; Mousa Abu Zeid and four members of his family, including his wife and three children, and, four of Mohammed Maslout’s children were also massacred.

3-7-1- Eye Witness: Sharon Charged with War Crimes

Speaking in Belgium about the massacre perpetrated half a century ago on his home village, Qibya, by the Israeli army division 101, under the command of the now Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon, and in which 56 Palestinian houses were demolished, Mohammed Abdallah Saleh Al Maslout told of his bitter memories.

As he and other 46 Palestinian families came to lodge a lawsuit against Sharon for the war crimes he committed in their village,

the now gray-haired Al-Maslout said: ‘Do I forget? … How can I forget? – though after 48 years and two days – my 9-month pregnant wife and two children: Sha’aban (5) and Muyassar (7)! They will stay with me as long as I live.”

He added that ‘’it was the olive harvest in the village. We were separated from Israel by barbed wires. However, the Israeli soldiers made their incursion from the western part of the village with mules loaded with mines and ammunition’’ Apparently, the mules had been purposely fitted with rubber horseshoes so that no hoof beats could be heard. Maslout went on to say that one of the guards of the olive fields saw the Israeli soldiers approaching at 7:00 p.m. They shot him down. The other guard was caught and shackled, but he managed to escape. He was followed by a hail of machine gun bullets and hit in the leg. However, he crawled his way to the village and reported on the attack. Some of the villagers believed him, others did not. Those who trusted Maslout left immediately to the hills.

Al Maslout stressed that he fled his home because he presumed that the Israeli army wouldn’t touch women. In the morning, most of the houses in the village were blown up over the heads of all who remained there. Very few of them miraculously survived.

The Israeli army division plunged into the village “in a retaliatory operation to teach the Palestinian village a lesson” drawn on the pretext that some Palestinian commandos (fedayeen) had penetrated from the village into Israel and killed one of the guards of the newly established Israeli agricultural cooperative (kibutz).

All the time since this massacre, Sharon has maintained that he never knew that people remained in those demolished houses. In his memoirs, and also in interviews, Sharon admitted that he ‘blew up those houses believing they were empty of people’.

Al Maslout said “the inhabitants of the neighboring villages came to help us the next day. They took out whoever they could wrench from the rubble, and buried the dead in the destroyed water well of the village, including the family members of Abu Qadous. On the right side of Qibya’s main entrance lies a large lot of land surrounded by prickly pears and filled with wild grass. Children avoid playing there or coming near the place, while pointing with their hands and rehearsing what they learnt by heart: ‘The collective grave of Abu Qadous family, killed by Sharon.’

Fateem el Mahmoud, Al Maslout’s second wife, said that her husband used to sit alone and burst into tears. He didn’t like to talk about his family that was annihilated in the massacre, but whenever he recalls that, his tears drop down continually, and he weeps in agony and torment.

Most of Qibya’s men feel remorse for having left their women vulnerable to death. Al Maslout said that they should not have left wives and children alone at home; however, we had no arms to defend even ourselves.

He said he didn’t sleep for 21 days, and wandered aimlessly in the mountains for several years before he returned to his village.

Al Maslout said that he is not sure that Sharon’s trial will bring him anything, simply because, he argues, if the world overlooks his current crimes, how can it punish him for past atrocities! Al Maslout added that something might happen; God is much stronger than Sharon.

Most of Qibya’s population earn their living from their work in Israel. Most of the village territory has been usurped by Israel. Ben Gurion International Airport is actually built on part of its lands, other parts are being used for Jewish settlements. Qibya’s mayor, Hasan Ahmed Ragheb said that the horrible atrocities constitute a systematic Israeli policy aimed at the eviction of the people from their land and properties, and from the area as a whole.

Indeed, half of the village inhabitants were forced to migrate after the massacre to the Jordanian town of Zarqa.

According to the Oslo Agreements, signed on September 13, 1993, Qibya lies under full Israeli security control.