Qibya massacre

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Location of the place Qibya in Cisjordan near Jehud

The massacre of Qibya (also spelled Kibya , Qibieh or Qibye ) (also Qibya attack or Qibya operation ) took place on May 14th / 15th. October 1953 in the village of Qibya , which was in the West Bank annexed by Jordan in violation of international law in 1949 . In Qibya where an outpost of the Arab Legion was destroyed elite units of the Israeli army 45 houses, a school and a mosque. 69 Arabs , including 42 villagers, were killed. The operation, in the form of a retaliatory action, was heavily criticized internationally and expressly condemned by the United Nations Security Council in resolution 101 of November 24, 1953.

background

The attack was preceded by a series of border crossings that began immediately after the 1949 armistice was signed . Israel was faced with a wave of Palestinian infiltration, with the Jordanian side unwilling to stop it. In 1951 137 Israelis, mostly civilians , were killed by such intruders. The following year the number of victims was 162. In 1953 160 Israelis were killed.

On October 12, 1953, an unarmed Jewish mother and her two children were murdered in their sleep by Jordanian intruders in the Israeli city of Jehud . The Israeli government decided to retaliate against the village of Qibya in the West Bank, which was then annexed by Jordan in violation of international law , near the Green Line to Israel. The order was placed by Defense Minister Pinchas Lawon in coordination with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion . The Israeli cabinet was not informed of this; Apparently, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharet was also not informed of the operation, according to some sources. On October 13, the Jordanian representative at the meeting of the MAC (the mixed ceasefire commission) condemned the attack on Yehud and promised Israel full cooperation in the search for the murderers. Jordan asked Israel not to retaliate. Sharet later said that "the commander of the Arab Legion , Glubb Pasha , [asked] to send police sniffer dogs from Israel to track down the Yehud assassins."

course

Qibya residents return to their village after the attacks, October 1953

The attack on Qibya began with artillery fire on the evening of October 14, 1953 , until Ariel Sharon's unit 101 reached the edge of the village. A company of paratroopers under the command of Aharon Davidi secured their flanks. Land mines were laid on the streets to prevent Jordanian troops from intervening in the battle. Israeli soldiers then placed explosives on many houses and blew them up. At dawn, the operation was deemed complete and Israeli forces returned.

45 houses of the villagers as well as the mosque , the school and the water storage tank were destroyed. 69 people did not follow the invitation to flee and perished in their homes, the majority of them civilians. Ten to twelve enemy soldiers had previously been killed.

The Israeli government initially claimed that the killings were committed by Jewish civilians living near the border, but later admitted that military forces carried out the operation.

The Israeli army claims the actual plan was to ambush Arab Legion forces in the area by demolishing a few houses to attract them. The initial orders given by the Israeli General Staff were relatively limited. They instructed the troops: "[...] carry out an attack ... with the aim of temporarily occupying and destroying the houses and damaging the residents". However, the order changed on the way down the chain of command before reaching the commanders of the units to require "maximum kills".

Ariel Sharon later wrote in his diary that he had received orders to inflict severe damage on the residents of Qibya: "The orders were extremely clear: Kibya should be an example for everyone". Sharon said that he thought the houses were empty and that the units had checked all of the houses before detonating the explosives. In his autobiography Warrior (1987) he wrote:

“I couldn't believe my ears. As I went through each step of the operation, I began to understand what must have happened. For years, Israeli retaliatory attacks had never done so, if at all, to blow up more than a few outlying buildings. Expecting the same, some Arab families must have stayed in their homes instead of leaving during the operation. In those big stone houses […] some could easily have hidden in the cellars and in the back rooms and remained silent when the paratroopers went in to check and shouted a warning. The result was this tragedy that had happened. "

Benny Morris , however, expressed doubts about this representation given the nature of the orders that Unit 101 had received. He also points to the fact that the United States, the United Nations, and Arab Legion reports showed that villagers were killed before the houses were blown up . Major General Vagn Bennike , the Danish chief of staff of the UN armistice monitoring organization, had toured the scene the next day and said: “A story was repeated many times: the door shattered by bullets, the corpse spread over the threshold indicated that the residents were passing through heavy fire had been forced to stay inside until their houses were blown up over them. "

consequences

A resident of Qibya stands in front of the ruins of his house after the attacks, October 1953.

On October 18, 1953, the United States Department of State issued a bulletin condemning the qibya attack and demanding that those responsible "be held accountable and that effective measures be taken to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future." Initially, the Israeli public was not informed of the attack.

On October 19, Ben-Gurion claimed that the attack was carried out by Israeli civilians. "The government of Israel no longer regrets anything when ... innocent blood has been spilled ... The government of Israel vigorously rejects the absurd and fantastic claim that 600 men of the Israeli armed forces took part in the act ... We set up a commission of inquiry and it is It is clear beyond all doubt that not a single army unit was absent from their base during the night of the attack on Kibya . "

The massacre sparked the most violent international storm of protest in Israel's history to date. The United Nations Security Council condemned Israel in resolution 101 of November 24, which was passed unanimously with two abstentions. The United States temporarily suspended economic aid to Israel.

Ariel Sharon wrote in his autobiography that although the civilian casualties were unfortunate, after the qibya operation "it was now clear that Israeli forces were again able to find and hit targets far behind enemy lines." the forces of the Arab Legion distributed on the border section at Qibya to stop further intruders into Israel and prevent further Israeli incursions. All in all, there was a short-term decrease in incursions along the border.

After the attack, the Israeli government refrained from direct reprisals against the enemy civilian population and placed Sharon’s previously independent unit 101 under the paratroopers.

Web links

literature

  • Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 , p. 278
  • Ze'ev Schiff , Israel Army Lexicon (Eng.)
  • The 1953 Qibya Raid Revisited: Excerpts from Moshe Sharett 's Diaries

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War , Oxford University Press , 1993, pp. 258f.
  2. ↑ a b Security Council Resolution 101 (1953). United Nations website, accessed November 16, 2018 (English and French)
  3. ↑ United Nations: 635th Meeting of the Security Council, November 9, 1953 (Eng.)
  4. ↑ Avi Shlaim : The Iron Wall , ISBN 0-393-32112-6 , pp. 90-93 (English).
  5. ↑ Jerusalem Post, October 31, 1965
  6. ↑ Contemporary Archives: October 21, 1953, 04216.
  7. ^ Statement by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, ISA FM 2435/5
  8. ^ Avi Shlaim : The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. WW Norton, New York City and London 2001, p. 91