Operation Shoshana | |
---|---|
Part of the Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency and the Israeli reprisal operations | |
Location | Qibya, West Bank |
Coordinates | 31°58′39″N 35°00′35″E / 31.97750°N 35.00972°E |
Date | October 14, 1953 |
Target | Palestinian Arabs |
Attack type | Mortar and dynamite attack |
Deaths | 69 Palestinian civilians |
Perpetrators | Israel Defense Forces Ariel Sharon |
Motive | Reprisal for the Yehud attack |
The Qibya massacre occurred during Operation Shoshana, a reprisal operation that occurred in October 1953 when Israeli troops under future prime minister Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank, which was then under Jordan's control, and killed Palestinian civilians.
Israeli forces massacred more than sixty-nine Palestinian villagers,[1] two thirds of which were women and children.[2] Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed.[3] The attack followed cross-border raids from the West Bank, and Israel framed the Qibya massacre as a response to the Yehud attack in which an Israeli woman and her two children were killed.[1][4]
The act was condemned by the U.S. State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide.[5] 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 Qibya massacre unleashed against Israel a storm of international protest of unprecedented severity in the country's short history.
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