Balad al-Shaykh massacre
The Balad al-Shaykh massacre took place during a Haganah raid on the Arab villages of Balad al-Shaykh and Hawassa, near Haifa, on the night of 31 December 1947–1 January 1948. The operation followed the Haifa oil refinery massacre, in which Arab attackers killed Jewish co-workers after an Irgun bombing killed Arab labourers at the refinery gate. The village raids killed Arab residents, including women and children.[1][2]
The raid
British officer Ivor Wilks, stationed at nearby Nesher Camp, recorded being awakened by heavy firing at about 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day. He saw fire directed into Balad al-Shaykh and described an attack lasting about an hour and a half. He learned later that day that Haganah had carried it out; his memoir identifies the force as part of the 1st Palmach Battalion.[1]
A British army intelligence return describes attackers using grenades and submachine guns, with armed Arabs returning fire.[2] Benny Morris, drawing on Haganah records, reports orders to kill “maximum adult males”. His account describes houses being fired into and demolished, and adult men being taken out and shot. A Haganah headquarters account attributed the killing of women and children to fire exchanged at houses.[3]
Deaths and contemporary reports
The surviving accounts differ in their dates, coverage and reported tolls:
| Source | Reported deaths | Coverage and detail |
|---|---|---|
| British army intelligence, 2 January 1948 | 14 Arabs, including 10 women and children | The return concerns Balad al-Shaykh. It attributes the figures to villagers and also records 11 seriously wounded.[2] |
| Palestine Police CID, 1–3 January 1948 | Five named deaths initially; a subsequent update gives seven dead; the 3 January appendix names four people who died of wounds. | The initial list includes residents of both Balad al-Shaykh and Hawassa. The published extracts identify at least nine distinct victims; the cumulative updates require reconciliation before assigning a final police total.[4] |
| Haganah reports quoted by Morris | 21 killed in one account; about 70 killed in another | Morris quotes these conflicting reports in his account of raids on both villages. The lower report includes two women and five children and records 41 injured.[3] |
The first JTA report, published on 2 January, gave a provisional figure of four Arabs killed and said that two members of the attacking force had failed to return.[5] Nesher’s later municipal heritage sign commemorates three Haganah fighters killed in the operation: Hanan Zelinger, Chaim Ben-Dor and Amos Galili.[6]
Aftermath
Many families fled the two villages toward Nablus, Jenin and Acre. In the Yishuv Defence Committee, Yaakov Riftin criticized the raids as indiscriminate: many refinery workers had taken no part in the earlier killings, and some had protected Jews. David Ben-Gurion replied that war made individual discrimination impossible, while allowing a distinction between villages.[3]
The raid and the preceding refinery killings are included in Killings and massacres in Mandatory Palestine.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ivor Wilks, A Once and Past Love: Palestine 1947, Israel 1948: A Memoir, Northwestern University, Program of African Studies, Special Papers Series (2011), printed pp. 18–22.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 6th Airborne Division, intelligence summary as at noon on 2 January 1948, North Sector, item A; The National Archives, WO 275/67. Photograph of the report, reproduced by David Collier in 2017; gallery with file cover.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press (2004), printed pp. 101–102.
- ↑ Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department, summaries for 1–3 January 1948; The National Archives, CO 537/3855. Photographs reproduced by David Collier in 2017: 1 January, item 29, initial deaths; continuation listing injuries; update, item 15; appendix dated 3 January, item 6. The named minimum is five initial victims plus four different names in the 3 January appendix: 5 + 4 = 9. The intermediate update reports two deaths from wounds without names; the published pages leave their relationship to the later named deaths unresolved.
- ↑ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, report of 2 January 1948.
- ↑ Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel and Nesher Municipality, heritage sign on Balad al-Shaykh and the Haganah reprisal operation (2022), Hebrew and English text.
