Al-Khisas raid
| Al-Khisas raid | |
|---|---|
| Part of the 1947–1949 Palestine war and the Nakba | |
 Remains of a house destroyed in the attack | |
| Location | Al-Khisas, Mandatory Palestine |
| Coordinates | 33°13′31″N 35°37′10″E / 33.22528°N 35.61944°E |
| Date | 18 December 1947 |
| Target | Palestinian Arabs |
Attack type | Arson, Massacre |
| Deaths | 10-15 villagers, including 5 children |
| Perpetrators | Palmach, Haganah |
The al-Khisas raid, also known as the al-Khisas massacre, was an attack on the Palestinian village of al-Khisas carried out by the Palmach on December 18, 1947 during the 1948 Palestine war. 10-15 Palestinian villagers were killed in the attack, including 5 children.
Background
[edit]The raid was performed in reprisal to a shooting in which a passenger on a horse-cart from a nearby kibbutz was shot and killed earlier that day, in an unrelated personal vendetta.[1] Local Palmach commanders mistakenly assumed the shooting was political,[2] and mistakenly judged that it had emanated from al-Khisas.[1]
The rationale at that time for the raid was that "if there was no reaction to the murder, the Arabs would interpret this as a sign of weakness and an invitation to further attacks".[1] The Hagana High Command approved the action on condition that the attack be directed against "men only and they should burn [only] a few houses".[1]
The attack
[edit]The massacre was carried out by the Palmach's 3rd Battalion, which later became part of the Yiftach Brigade.[citation needed]
According to Haim Levenberg:
One unit attacked with hand-grenades a four-roomed house killing two men and five children, and wounding five other men. At the same time, another unit attacked a house in the village owned by Amir Al-Fa’ur of Syria, in which one Syrian and two Lebanese peasants were killed and another Lebanese and two local men were wounded. According to HQ British Troops in Palestine, the villagers did not use any firearms to defend themselves.[3]
10-15 Palestinian villagers were killed in the attack, 5 of them children.[4][5]
Aftermath and reactions
[edit]Following the attack a large number of al-Khisas' residents fled their homes, becoming a part of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight.[6]
The Jewish leadership at the time sharply criticized the attack.[1] Three weeks later, Arab forces crossed the Syrian border and carried out a reprisal attack on the kibbutz Kfar Szold, but suffered heavy losses and were repulsed.[1]
The events led to an escalation in violence that rapidly spread through the Upper Galilee region;[1] the region had generally been quiet before the massacre, which was blamed for unnecessarily widening the hostilities.[7]
On 1 January 1948, David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary about the attack, stating:[8][9][a]
"The question is not if there is a necessity to retaliate ... We need strong and harsh retaliation ... When the family is known, we must be merciless in hitting them; including women and children, or our retaliation will not be efficient. No need to differentiate ... between the guilty and the innocent."
During the operation a female member of the battalion had refused to throw a grenade into a room in which she could hear a child crying; following the event the battalion's commander Moshe Kelman argued that women should not be used on front line duties but should be used as "cooks and service people."[10]
On the night of 5 June 1949, the remaining inhabitants of Khisas were forcibly expelled as part of the 1949–1956 Palestinian expulsions.[11]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g Benvenisti, M. (2000). Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. University of California Press. p. 103. ISBN 9780520211544.
- ^ Finkelstein, N. (2015). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso. p. 173. ISBN 978-1-78478-459-1. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
- ^ Levenberg, H.; Lewenberg, H. (1993). Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine, 1945-1948. Frank Press. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-7146-3439-5. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
- ^ Pappé 2006, "Fifteen villagers, including five children, were killed in the attack."
- ^ Benny Morris, 1948 and After (1990), "ten Arab civilians, including five children"
- ^ Morris 2004, "Following the raid, a large part of Khisas’s population left their homes"
- ^ Abbasi, Mustafa. “The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948: A Revised Study.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 1 (2004): 21–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3880136.
- ^ Saleh Abdel Jawad, 2007, Zionist Massacres: the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in the 1948 War
- ^ Pappé 2006
- ^ Kurzman, Don (1970). Genesis 1948. The First Arab-Israeli War. New York: New American Library (NAL). p. 65. LCCN 77-96925.
- ^ Benny Morris, 1948 and After (1990), page 200
- ^ Translation of Saleh Abdel Jawad
- 1947 in Mandatory Palestine
- Massacres in 1947
- 1947 fires
- Terrorist incidents in Asia in 1947
- December 1947 events in Asia
- 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine
- Arson in the 1940s
- 1940s fires in Asia
- Attacks on buildings and structures in the 1940s
- Massacres in Mandatory Palestine
- Massacres of Palestinians
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- Haganah attacks
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