Operation Shoshana
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The Qibya massacre occurred during Operation Shoshana, an Israeli so-called reprisal operation that occurred in October 1953, when IDF's
Unit 101 Commando Unit 101 () was a sayeret (commando) unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), founded and commanded by Ariel Sharon on orders from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in August 1953. They were armed with non-standard weapons and tasked wit ...
led by future Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon Ariel Sharon ( ; also known by his diminutive Arik, ; 26 February 192811 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the prime minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006. Born in Kfar Malal in Mandatory Palestin ...
attacked the village of
Qibya Qibya () is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, located northwest of Ramallah and exactly north of the large Israeli city of Modi'in. It is part of the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, and according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Sta ...
in the
West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
, which was then under Jordanian control, and killed more than sixty-nine Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of whom were women and children. Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed.Benny Morris, ''Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War'', Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 258–9. Ariel Sharon wrote in his diary that "Qibya was to be an example for everyone," and that he ordered "maximal killing and damage to property". Post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting. The attack followed cross-border raids from the
West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
. Israel framed the Qibya massacre as a response to the Yehud attack, in which an Israeli woman and her two children were killed. The massacre was condemned by the U.S. State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. 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 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,1949 Armistice Agreements The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,Nakba The Nakba () is the ethnic cleansing; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their s ...
. Along the 1949 armistice line, infiltrations, armed or otherwise, were frequent from both sides. Many infiltrations from Jordanian territory in the
West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
consisted of unarmed
Palestinian refugees Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refug ...
attempting to rejoin their families. During 1948–49, most of the infiltrators crossed the borders to harvest crops left behind, to plant new crops in their abandoned lands, or to retrieve goods. Many others came to resettle in their old villages or elsewhere inside Israel, or to visit relatives, or simply to get a glimpse of their abandoned homes and fields. During the following years the vast majority came to steal crops, irrigation pipes, farm animals, or other property belonging to settlers, or to graze their flocks. Some engaged in smuggling goods or mail—certain items, such as Bedouin clothing, were often unavailable in Israel, and there were no postal services between Israel and the Arab states. Others moved through Israeli territory in order to reach other Arab countries, most frequently from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Most of the infiltrators were unarmed individuals, though it appears that the proportion who came armed and in groups steadily increased after 1950. Half of Jordan's prison population at the time consisted of people arrested for attempting to return to, or illegally enter, Israeli territory, but the number of complaints filed by Israel over infiltrations from the
West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
show a considerable reduction, from 233 in the first nine months of 1952, to 172 for the same period in 1953, immediately before the attack. This marked reduction was in good part the result of increased Jordanian efficiency in patrolling. Between June 1949 and the end of 1952, a total of 57 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by Palestinian infiltrators from the Jordanian West Bank. The Israeli death toll for the first nine months of 1953 was 32. Over roughly the same time (November 1950 – November 1953), the
Mixed Armistice Commission The Mixed Armistice Commissions (MAC) is an organisation for monitoring the ceasefire along the lines set by the General Armistice Agreements. It was composed of United Nations Military Observers and was part of the United Nations Truce Supervisio ...
condemned Israeli raids 44 times. For the same period, 1949–1953, Jordan maintained that it alone suffered 629 killed and injured from Israeli incursions and cross-border bombings. UN sources for the period, based on the documentation at General Bennike's disposal (prepared by Commander E H Hutchison USNR), lower both estimates. Over the year leading up to the raid, Israeli forces and civilians had conducted many punitive expeditions, causing destruction of infrastructure and crops and many civilian casualties against Palestinian villages, with
Latrun Latrun (, ''Latrun''; , ''al-Latrun'') is a strategic hilltop in the Latrun salient in the Ayalon Valley. It overlooks the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 25 kilometers west of Jerusalem and 14 kilometers southeast of Ramla. It was the si ...
, Falameh (Falāma, Falamya),
Rantis Rantis () is a Palestinian town in the West Bank, located in the northwestern Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, 33 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it had a population of 3,179 in 2017 ...
,
Qalqiliya Qalqilya or Qalqiliya () is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, which serves as the administrative center of the Qalqilya Governorate. The city had a population of 51,683 in 2017. Qalqilya is surrounded by the Israeli West Bank wall, with a narr ...
,
Khirbet al-Deir Khirbet al-Deir (), or Khirbet ed-Deir, is a Palestinian village located southwest of Bethlehem, and northwest of Hebron. The town is in the Hebron Governorate of central West Bank. According to the 2017 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics ...
, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin,
Qatanna Qatanna () is a Palestinian town in the central West Bank part of the Jerusalem Governorate, located 12 km. northwest of Jerusalem. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 6,981 inhabitants in ...
,
Wadi Fukin Wadi Fukin () is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, eight kilometers southwest of Bethlehem in the Bethlehem Governorate. The village is located on 700 acres of land,David Tepper'The fight to save a village continues in Wadi Fukin,' Mondowei ...
,
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, and
Surif Surif () is a Palestinian City in the Hebron Governorate located 25 km northwest of the city of Hebron. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics census, Surif had a population of 17,287 in 2017. The population is entirely Mus ...
being the most notable examples. Meanwhile, Palestinian guerilla raids into Israel continued. Over a two-week period in late May and early June, four raids by Palestinian
fedayeen Fedayeen ( ''fidāʻiyyūn'' "self-sacrificers") is an Arabic language, Arabic term used to refer to various military groups willing to sacrifice themselves for a larger campaign. Etymology "Fidayun" is the plural of "fidayi" ( ''fidāʻiyy'' ...
killed 3 and wounded 6 people in Israel, at
Beit Arif Beit Arif () is a moshav in the Central District of Israel. Located adjacent to the town of Shoham, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hevel Modi'in Regional Council. In it had a population of . Etymology The moshav was originally named Ahlama ...
,
Beit Nabala Bayt Nabala or Beit Nabala was a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict, Mandatory Palestine, Ramle Subdistrict in Palestine (region), Palestine that was destroyed during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The village wa ...
,
Tirat Yehuda Tirat Yehuda () is a national religious moshav in the Central District of Israel. Located near Shoham, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hevel Modi'in Regional Council. In it had a population of . History During the 18th and 19th centuries, ...
and
Kfar Hess Kfar Hess () is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain to the south-east of Tel Mond and covering 3,800 dunams, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lev HaSharon Regional Council. In it had a population of . History The village ...
which, according to the UN, greatly concerned both the Israeli and Jordanian governments. The specific incident which the Israeli government used to justify its assault on Qibya occurred on 12 October 1953, when a Jewish woman, Suzanne Kinyas, and her two children were killed by a grenade thrown into their house in the Israeli town of
Yehud Yehud may refer to: * Yehud, the Levantine province of the Neo-Babylonian Empire * Yehud Medinata, the Levantine province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire * Yehud, the modern-day Israeli city See also *Yahud (disambiguation) *Yehudi (disambiguatio ...
, some inside of the Green Line. The attack initially drew a sharp rebuke to Jordan from the Mixed Armistice Commission. The Israeli government immediately claimed that the killings were perpetrated by Palestinian infiltrators, a charge queried by Jordanian officials, who were skeptical, and who offered to collaborate with Israel in order to apprehend the guilty parties, whoever and wherever they were.
Moshe Sharett Moshe Sharett (; born Moshe Chertok (); 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was the second prime minister of Israel and the country’s first foreign minister. He signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was a principal negotiator in th ...
said later that "the Commander of the Jordan Legion,
Glubb Pasha Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ, KPM (16 April 1897 – 17 March 1986), known as Glubb Pasha (; and known as Abu Hunaik by the Jordanians), was a British military officer who led and trained Transj ...
, had asked for police
bloodhound The bloodhound is a large scent hound, originally bred for hunting deer, wild boar, rabbits, and since the Middle Ages, for tracking people. Believed to be descended from hounds once kept at the Abbey of Saint-Hubert, Belgium, in French it is ...
s to cross over from Israel to track down the Yahud attackers". On the other hand, some weeks later, while assisting a United Nations and Jordanian team following the tracks of the person(s) who on 1 November had blown up a water-line in Jordanian territory supplying the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, tracks that led to the Scopus fence, the Israeli inspector delegated to the team denied them permission to enter the Jewish area around
Mount Scopus Mount Scopus ( ', "Mount of the Watchmen/ Sentinels"; ', lit. "Mount Lookout", or ' "Mount of the Scene/Burial Site", or "Mount Syenite") is a mountain (elevation: above sea level) in northeast Jerusalem. Between the 1948 Arab–Israeli ...
and prosecute their investigation. For the first time, Israel accepted Jordan's offer of assistance and the tracks of the perpetrator were traced to a point 1400m 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 14 October. The Chief of Staff of the Arab Legion in
Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...
flew to
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
to ask that no retaliatory actions take place that might compromise Jordanian investigations underway on their side of the border. According to the former ''
Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' correspondent to Jerusalem,
Donald Neff Donald Lloyd Neff (October 15, 1930 – May 10, 2015) was an American author and journalist. Born in York, Pennsylvania, he spent 16 years employed by ''Time'', and was their bureau chief in Israel. He also worked for ''The Washington Star''. Ne ...
: "Force had to be used to demonstrate to the Arabs that Israel was in the Middle East to stay, Ben Gurion believed, and to that end he felt strongly that his retaliatory policy had to be continued."
Defense Minister A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and military forces, found in states where the government is divid ...
Pinhas Lavon Pinhas Lavon (; 12 July 190424 January 1976) was an Israeli politician, minister and labor leader, best known for the Lavon Affair. Early life Lavon was born Pinhas Lubianiker in the small city of Kopychyntsi in the Galicia region of Austria ...
gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...
. The Israeli elected governing cabinet was not informed, and though
Minister of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and foreign relations, relations, diplomacy, bilateralism, ...
Moshe Sharett Moshe Sharett (; born Moshe Chertok (); 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was the second prime minister of Israel and the country’s first foreign minister. He signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was a principal negotiator in th ...
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 outcom

File:Qibya 1944.jpg, Qibya 1944 1:20,000 File:Deir Abu Mash'al 1945.jpg, Qibya 1945 1:250,000


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 14 October 1953 at around 9.30 pm, and was taken by roughly half a
battalion A battalion is a military unit, typically consisting of up to one thousand soldiers. A battalion is commanded by a lieutenant colonel and subdivided into several Company (military unit), companies, each typically commanded by a Major (rank), ...
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 Commando Unit 101 () was a sayeret (commando) unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), founded and commanded by Ariel Sharon on orders from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in August 1953. They were armed with non-standard weapons and tasked wit ...
. 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 raid was personally led by future Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon Ariel Sharon ( ; also known by his diminutive Arik, ; 26 February 192811 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the prime minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006. Born in Kfar Malal in Mandatory Palestin ...
, who at the time was a
Major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...
in the IDF and the commander of Unit 101. The attack began with a
mortar Mortar may refer to: * Mortar (weapon), an indirect-fire infantry weapon * Mortar (masonry), a material used to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together * Mortar and pestle, a tool pair used to crush or grind * Mortar, Bihar, a village i ...
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 Budrus () is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located 31 kilometers northwest of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the village had a population of ...
. The Israeli troops simultaneously entered the village from three sides. IDF soldiers encountered resistance from soldiers and village guards, and in the gunbattle that followed, 10–12 soldiers and guards defending the village were killed and an Israeli soldier was lightly wounded. Military engineers dynamited dozens of buildings across the village, killing scores of civilians. In the words of historian
Rashid Khalidi Rashid Ismail Khalidi (; born 18 November 1948) is a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East and the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He served as editor of the '' Journal of Palestine St ...
, the operation “blew up forty-five homes with their inhabitants inside." At dawn, the operation was considered complete, and the Israelis returned home. Ariel Sharon 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." Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property", and post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.Benny Morris, ''Israel's Border Wars'', ibid. pp. 257–276. esp. pp.249,262 UN observers noted that they observed bodies near doorways, and bullet marks on the doors of demolished houses, and later concluded that residents might have been forced by heavy fire to stay in their homes.


International reaction

An emergency meeting of the
Mixed Armistice Commission The Mixed Armistice Commissions (MAC) is an organisation for monitoring the ceasefire along the lines set by the General Armistice Agreements. It was composed of United Nations Military Observers and was part of the United Nations Truce Supervisio ...
(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 UN Security Council subsequently adopted Resolution 100 on 27 October 1953. On 24 November, the
UN Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, an ...
passed Resolution 101 and expressed the ''"strongest possible censure of this action."'' The attack was universally condemned by the international community. The U.S. State Department issued a bulletin on 18 October 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, as Israel had been informed on 18 September, had been "deferred" until Israel saw fit to cooperate with the United Nations in the Demilitarized Zone, in relation to its ongoing water diversion work near
Bnot Ya'akov Bridge The Daughters of Jacob Bridge (, ) is a bridge that spans the last natural ford of the Jordan River between the Korazim Plateau in northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The area has been used as a crossing point for thousands of years; it wa ...
; that site had been chosen as the original location for the intake of Israel's
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, but it would be moved downstream to the
Sea of Galilee The Sea of Galilee (, Judeo-Aramaic languages, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ), also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth ...
at Eshed Kinrot, following this US pressure.Sosland, Jeffrey (2007) ''Cooperating Rivals: The Riparian Politics of the Jordan River Basin'' SUNY Press, p 70


Israeli reaction

The international outcry caused by the operation required a formal reply by Israel. Intense discussions took place, and
Moshe Sharett Moshe Sharett (; born Moshe Chertok (); 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was the second prime minister of Israel and the country’s first foreign minister. He signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was a principal negotiator in th ...
summed up, in his diary on 16 October, the opinion that:
Now the army wants to know how we (the
Foreign Ministry In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral re ...
) 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 19 October
Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder and first prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency ...
publicly asserted that the
raid RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
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, Ben-Gurion addressed the nation, repeating the accusation that the massacre had been perpetrated by Israeli civilians:
The ewishborder 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 he people insome 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.
Israeli historian
Avi Shlaim Avi Shlaim (, ; born 31 October 1945) is an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent. He is one of Israel's " New Historians", a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Isr ...
observed that the official Israeli version was not believed, and it did nothing to reduce the damage to Israel's image. "This was not Ben-Gurion's first lie for what he saw as the good of his country, nor was it to be the last, but it was one of the most blatant." Sharon later claimed 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) Sharon 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.
Uri Avnery Uri Avnery (, also transliterated Uri Avneri; 10 September 1923 – 20 August 2018) was a German-born Israeli writer, journalist, politician, and activist, who founded the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the Irgun as a teenager and a vet ...
, 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

According to
Daniel Byman Daniel L. Byman (born 1967) is an American political scientist. His research focuses on terrorism, Counterterrorism and the Middle East. Byman is currently a professor in Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service and director of Geor ...
, the attack, "controversial, brutal, and bloody – worked," leading Jordan to arrest more than a thousand
fedayeen Fedayeen ( ''fidāʻiyyūn'' "self-sacrificers") is an Arabic language, Arabic term used to refer to various military groups willing to sacrifice themselves for a larger campaign. Etymology "Fidayun" is the plural of "fidayi" ( ''fidāʻiyy'' ...
and stepped up its patrolling of the border. Following the attack, the Arab Legion deployed soldiers 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 altogether.Benny Morris, ''Righteous Victims, A history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881–2001'', First Vintage books, 2001. p. 279. "After Qibya the IDF switched from civilian to military targets. Arab civilian casualties declined markedly, reducing Western condemnation of "indiscriminate" Israeli reprisals. But the sorties increased in size and firepower: Many more troops and guns were needed to conquer a well-fortified military camp or police fort than to overrun a village." Defense Minister
Pinhas Lavon Pinhas Lavon (; 12 July 190424 January 1976) was an Israeli politician, minister and labor leader, best known for the Lavon Affair. Early life Lavon was born Pinhas Lubianiker in the small city of Kopychyntsi in the Galicia region of Austria ...
's words to the General Staff in July 1954 were, "Guys, you have to understand
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
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 massacres in the Palestinian territories The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in Palestine (East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip) after the 1948 Palestine war. * For massacres in Israel, see List of massacres in Israel. * For massacres of (and by) Palestini ...
*
List of attacks against Israeli civilians before 1967 This article deals with acts of Palestinian political violence against Israeli civilians between the establishment of the 1949 Armistice Agreements and the 1967 Six-Day War. Prior to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the S ...


References


Sources

*
Ze'ev Schiff Ze'ev Schiff (‎; 1 July 1932 – 19 June 2007) was an Israeli journalist and military correspondent for ''Haaretz''. Schiff moved to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1935. He studied Middle Eastern affairs and military history at Tel Avi ...
, ''Israel Army Lexicon'' * ''The 1953 Qibya Raid Revisited: Excerpts from
Moshe Sharett Moshe Sharett (; born Moshe Chertok (); 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was the second prime minister of Israel and the country’s first foreign minister. He signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was a principal negotiator in th ...
's Diaries''


Further reading

*


External links


UNSC resolution on Qibya operation
text at JVL
United Nations text
in PDF. {{Authority control 1953 in Israel Ariel Sharon Conflicts in 1953 Israeli massacres of Palestinians Massacres in the West Bank Governorate Massacres committed by Israel Operations involving Israeli special forces Reprisal operations (Israel) 1953 in the West Bank Governorate October 1953 in Asia 1953 murders in Israel Massacres in 1953 1950s building bombings School bombings in Palestine Mosque bombings in Palestine 20th-century mass murder in Palestine Explosions in 1953 Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate 20th-century attacks on mosques Attacks on schools in the 1950s Grenade attacks in Asia Residential building bombings in Palestine