During the1948 Palestine war, two massacres were perpetrated by Zionist forces in thePalestinian village ofSa'sa'. The first occurred on the night of 14-15 February 1948, whenPalmach forces attacked the village killing approximately 60 people.[1][a] The second massacre occurred on 30 October 1948 when the village was conquered by theIsraeli military as part ofOperation Hiram.
One history of 1948 asserts that the reason for the attack was to restore Jewish public confidence in their fighting forces following the deaths of all the members of aplatoon attempting to take supplies toKfar Etzion a month previously.[3]
According toEfraim Karsh, on January 20-21 some 400 armed Arab fighters from 2nd Yarmuk Regiment ofArab Liberation Army based in Sa'sa' carried out attacks on isolated kibbutzYechiam in western Galilee.[4]
In February 1948,Yigal Allon, commander of thePalmach in the north, ordered an attack onSa'sa'. The order was given toMoshe Kelman, the deputy commander of Third Battalion. The order read: "You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many warriors as possible".[6][7] According toIlan Pappé, "warriors" should be read as "villagers" to properly understand the order.[6]
On February 15, 1948, aPalmach unit entered the village during the night and, without resistance, planted explosives against some of the houses. It was reported at the time that ten or more houses were totally or partially destroyed and 11 villagers were killed (5 of them small children).[8] According to the official history of theHaganah, the village had been used as a base forArab fighters.[9][7] However, press reports at the time cited by Khalidi belie this, since the Palmach units met "without opposition" in the village.[7] Moshe Kelman himself wrote that "We left behind 35 demolished houses and 60–80 dead bodies",[10] and historians estimate 60 people were killed and 16-20 houses demolished.[11][12]
30 October massacre
A Palmach unit attacks Sa'sa, October 1948
A second massacre occurred after the conquest of the village on 30 October duringOperation Hiram. HistorianSaleh Abdel Jawad writes that "many villagers" were killed.[13][14] Those villagers who had not already fled were expelled. Northern Command OCMoshe Carmel later reported that he had seen evidence of killings, and an official investigation by Major Emanuel Yalan suggested that some villagers, including some with disabilities, may have been killed after the village was occupied. However, the relevant Israeli files remain closed to historians.[15]
"The History of the Haganah" byBen-Zion Dinur described the attack as "one of the most daring raids into enemy territory."[7]
Currently, there are few remains of the Palestinian village of Sa'sa', with the exception of the villagemosque, which has now been converted into the kibbutz cultural center.
In 1992, thePalestinian historianWalid Khalidi described the remains of the village: "Some of the old olive trees remain, and a number of walls and houses still stand. Some of the houses are presently used by kibbutzSasa; one of them has an arched entrance and arched windows. A large portion of the surrounding land is forested, the rest is cultivated by Israeli farmers."[16]
^Jawad, S.A. (2007). Zionist Massacres: the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in the 1948 War. In: Benvenisti, E., Gans, C., Hanafi, S. (eds) Israel and the Palestinian Refugees. Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, vol 189. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68161-8_3
^Kurzman, Don (1970)Genesis 1948. The First Arab-Israeli War. An Nal Book, New York. Library of Congress number 77-96925. p.53
^Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, 2008, "killing some sixty villagers and destroying twenty houses."
^Jawad, S.A. (2007). Zionist Massacres: the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in the 1948 War. In: Benvenisti, E., Gans, C., Hanafi, S. (eds) Israel and the Palestinian Refugees. Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, vol 189. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68161-8_3. "30 October [...] Indiscriminate killings occur. Many villagers, including cripples, are massacred after the surrender of the village."
^Khalidi 1992, "The second massacre was perpetrated on 30 October, at the time that the village was occupied, during Operation Hiram"
Cohen, Amnon (1973).Palestine in the Eighteenth Century: Patterns of Government and Administration. Jerusalem: Hebrew University. Cited in Petersen, (2001)
Cohen, Amnon;Lewis, B. (1978).Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century. Princeton University Press.ISBN0-691-09375-X.
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