Al-Dawayima massacre
Encyclopedia
On October 28, 1948, the Arab town al-Dawayima
Al-Dawayima
Al-Dawayima was a Palestinian town, located northwest of the city of Hebron. It is identified with the Old Testament town of Bosqat. According to a 1945 census, the town's population was 3,710, and the village lands comprised a total land area of 60,585 dunums of which nearly half was cultivable...

 (also spelt Dawaymeh) was conquered by the IDF's 89th Commando Battalion during the Operation Yoav
Operation Yoav
Operation Yoav was an Israeli military operation carried out from 15–22 October 1948 in the Negev Desert, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Its goal was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces along the coast and the Beersheba–Hebron–Jerusalem road and ultimately to conquer the whole Negev...

. The Battalion, whose first commander was Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. The fourth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces , he became a fighting symbol to the world of the new State of Israel...

, was composed of former Irgun
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...

 and Lehi
Lehi (group)
Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...

 forces. They encountered only "light resistance" from the villagers, whose core clan, the Ahdibs, traced their origins to the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century. Dawayima was situated a few kilometres west of Hebron. It had a population of six thousand people, Some four thousand Arab refugees had taken refuge in the village prior to the massacre. The Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...

 intelligence service (HIS) considered the village to be 'very friendly'.

Scale

According to Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...

, "dozens" of people were killed, up to possibly 100. Saleh Abdel Jawad
Saleh Abdel Jawad
Saleh Abd al-Jawad is a Palestinian historian. He received his PhD in Political Science from Paris X-Nanterre University in 1986 and works as Professor of History and Political Science at Birzeit University since 1981.- Publications :...

 evaluates the total to "between 100 and 200". As detailed below however, the UN and IDF investigations disagree with this to a notable extent.

Eyewitness accounts

Benny Morris writes:
Also according to Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...

, the occupying forces held the villagers responsible for taking part in the Kfar Etzion massacre
Kfar Etzion massacre
The Kfar Etzion massacre was an act committed by Arab armed forces on May 13, 1948, the day before the Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel.-Background:...

 on the grounds that the 'Loot of the Etzion Block' was in the village, and therefore took revenge. A trooper, Avraham Vered, added another motive for revenge, the fact that the village was in the Hebron hills, some of whose villagers had been responsible for the 1929 Hebron Massacre
1929 Hebron massacre
The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of sixty-seven Jews on 23 and 24 August 1929 in Hebron, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were massacring Arabs in Jerusalem and seizing control of Muslim holy places...

 

From the sworn Statement given by the Mukhtar
Mukhtar
Mukhtar meaning "chosen" in Arabic, refers to the head of a village or mahalle in many Arab countries as well as in Turkey and Cyprus. The name refers to the fact that mukhtars are usually selected by some consensual or participatory method, often involving an election. Mukhtar is also a common...

 of Dawaymeh village, Hassan Mahmaod Ihdeib.

Hassan Mahmaod Ihdeib reported that half an hour after the midday prayer on Friday the 28/10/48, Hassan heard the sound of shooting from the Western side of the village, On investigation, Hassan observed a troop of some twenty armoured car approaching the village on the Qubeiba – Dawaymeh road a second troop approaching along the Beit Jibrin -Dawaymeh road and other armoured vehicles approaching from the direction of Mafkhar-Dawaymeh, The village had only twenty guards, They were posted on the Western side of the village, When the armoured cars were within half a kilometre from the village, they opened fire from automatic weapons and mortars and advanced on the village in a semi-circular movement, thereby surrounding the village on the Western, Northern and Southern sides, A section of the armoured cars entered the village with automatic weapons blazing - Jewish troops jumped put of the armoured cars and spread out through the streets of the village firing promiscuously at anything they saw, The villagers began to flee the village while the older ones took shelter in the Mosque and others in a nearby cave called Iraq El Zagh. The shooting continued for about an hour.

The following day, the Mukhtar met with the villagers and agreed to return to the village that night to find out the fate of those that had stayed behind. He reports that in the Mosque there were the bodies of some sixty persons, most of them were, men of advanced age who had taken shelter in the Mosque. His father was among them, He saw a large number of bodies in the streets, bodies of men, women and children, He then went to the Cave of Iraq El Zagh, He found at the mouth of the cave the bodies of eighty five persons, again men, women and children, The Mukhtar then carried out a census of the inhabitants of the village and found that a total of 455 persons was missing of whom 280 were men and the rest women and children, There were other casualties among the refugees, the number of which the Mukhtar was unable to determine, The Mukhtar explicitly states that the village had not been called upon to surrender and that the Jewish troops had not met with any resistance.'

The UN inspection team

Yigal Allon
Yigal Allon
Yigal Allon was an Israeli politician, a commander of the Palmach, and a general in the IDF. He served as one of the leaders of Ahdut HaAvoda party and the Israeli Labor party, and acting Prime Minister of Israel, and was a member of the Knesset and government minister from the 10th through the...

 cabled General Yitzhak Sadeh
Yitzhak Sadeh
Yitzhak Sadeh , was the commander of the Palmach, one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel and a cousin of British philosopher Isaiah Berlin.-Biography:...

 to check "the 'rumours' that the 89th Battilion had 'killed many tens of prisoners on the day of the conquest of al-Dawayima', and to respond." On the 5 November probably worried about a UN investigation Allon then ordered Sadeh to instruct the unit:-

"that is accused of murdering Arab civilians at Dawayima to go to the village and bury with their own hands the corpses of those murdered."


Although unbeknownst to Allon the 89th had cleaned up the site of the massacre on the 1 November 1948

On November 7 UN inspectors visited the scene of the village to investigate accusations of a massacre, the accusation being made by the Egyptians and refugees from the village. The team found "several demolished buildings and one corpse but no other physical evidence of a massacre." The UN team did however take a witness statement from the village mukhtar

Isser Be'eri
Isser Be'eri
Isser Be'eri was the director of the Haganah Intelligence Service in Israel and was responsible for helping to reorganise Israeli intelligence services in 1948, as well as knowingly ordering the execution of an innocent man, Meir Tobianski...

, the commander of the IDF intelligence service, who conducted an independent investigation, concluded that 80 people had been killed during the occupation of Al-Dawayima and that 22 had been captured and executed subsequently. Be'eri recommended prosecution of the platoon OC, who had confessed to the massacre, but notwithstanding his recommendations no one was put on trial or punished.

On 14 November the Israeli cabinet instructed Prime Minister Ben Gurion to also launch an investigation
The Schapera inquiry
The Shapira inquiry, November 1948, was an internal Israeli government inquiry following reports that the IDF had harmed civilians during military operations in Galilee and the South.-Background:...

. Its findings remain secret.

Reactions

The American consul in Jerusalem, William Burdett, who had received news about the massacre reported on November 16 to Washington "Investigation by UN indicates massacre occurred but observers are unable to determine number of persons involved."

News of the massacre reached village communities in the western Hebron and Judean foothills "possibly precipitating further flight".

However:-

'The reason why so little is known about this massacre which, in many respects, was more brutal than the Deir Yassin massacre
Deir Yassin massacre
The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people...

, is because the Arab Legion
Arab Legion
The Arab Legion was the regular army of Transjordan and then Jordan in the early part of the 20th century.-Creation:...

 feared that if the news was allowed to spread, it would have the same effect on the morale of the peasantry that Deir Yassin had, namely to cause another flow of Arab refugees.'

See also


External links

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