"Israels" Sacred Terrorism Part III

The court recordings continue:
He (Melinki) informed the assembled officers that the war had begun, that their units were now under the command of the 'Israeli' Defense Army, and that their task was to impose the curfew in the minority villages from 1700 to 0600, after informing the Mukhtars to this effect at 1630. With regard to the observation of the curfew, Melinki emphasized that it was forbidden to harm inhabitants who stayed in their homes, but that anyone found outside his home (or, according to other witnesses, anyone leaving his home, or anyone breaking the curfew) should be shot dead. He added that there were to be no arrests, and that if a number of people were killed in the night (according to other witnesses: it was desirable that a number of people should be killed as) this would facilitate the imposition of the curfew during succeeding nights.
......... While he was outlining this series of orders, Major Melinki allowed the officers to ask him questions. Lieutenant Franknanthal asked him "What do we do with the dead?" (or, according to other witnesses "with the wounded?") Melinki replied: "Take no notice of them" (or, according to other evidence: "They must not be removed," or, according to a third witness: "There will not be any wounded.") Arieh Menches, a section leader, then asked "What about women and children?" to which Melinki replied "No sentimentality" (according to another witness: "They are to be treated like anyone else-, the curfew covers them too.") Menches then asked a second question: "What about people returning from their work?" Here Alexandroni tried to intervene, but Melinki silenced him, and answered: "They are to be treated like anyone else" (according to another witness, he added: "it will be just too bad for them, as the Commander said.")
In the minutes of the meeting which were taken down and signed by Melinki a short time after he signed the series of orders, the following appears:

....As from today, at 1700 hours, curfew shall be imposed in the minority villages until 0600 hours, and all who disobey this order will be shot dead.

After this psychological preparation, and the instructions given to the policemen-soldiers to "shoot to kill all who broke the curfew," the unit went out to the village of Kafr Qasim to start its work:

The first to be shot at the western entrance to the village were four quarrymen returning on bicycles from the places where they worked near Petah Tiqva and Ras al-Ain. A short time after the curfew began these four workmen came round the bend in the road pushing their bicycles. When they had gone some ten to fifteen meters along the road towards the school, they were shot from behind at close range, from the left. Two of the four (Ahmad Mahmud Freij and Ali Othman Taha, both 30 years old) were killed outright. The third (Muhammad Mahmud Freij, brother of Ahmad Freij) was wounded in the thigh and the forearm, while the fourth, Abdullah Samir Badir, escaped by throwing himself to the ground. The bicycle of the wounded man, Ahmad, fell on him and covered his body, and he managed to lie motionless throughout the bloody incidents that took place around him. Eventually he crawled into an olive grove and lay under an olive tree until morning. Abdullah was shot at again when he rolled from the road to the sidewalk, whereupon he sighed and pretended to he dead. After the two subsequent massacres, which took place beside him, he hid himself among a flock of sheep, whose shepherd had been killed, and escaped into the village with the flock. . . .
A short time after this killing a shepherd and his twelve year old son came back from the pasture with their flock. They approached the bend along the road from the Jewish colony of Masha. The flock went along the road as far as the village school, the shepherd throwing stones at sheep that had strayed to turn them back on to the Masha road. Two or three soldiers, standing by the bend, opened fire at close range on the shepherd and his son and killed them. Their names were Othman Abdullah Issa, aged 30, and his son Fathi Othman Abdullah Issa, aged twelve.

Note: The translation of the court proceedings appeared in The Arabs in 'Israel' by Sabri Jiyris (Monthly Review, 1976). Jiyris sums up: "In the first hour of the curfew, between 5 and 6 PM, the men of the 'Israeli' Frontier Guard killed forty-seven Arab citizens in Kafr Qasim."
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APPENDIX 3 "Soon the Singing Will Turn Into A Death Moan"
The following is excerpted from Meir Har-Tzion's Diary, published by Levin-Epstein, Ltd., Tel Aviv, 1969. It describes an 'Israeli' raid in Gaza during the early 1950s.

The wide, dry riverbed glitters in the moonlight. We advance, carefully, along the mountain slope. Several houses can be seen. Bushes and shrubbery sway in the breeze, casting their shadows on the ground. In the distance we can see three lights and hear the sounds of Arab music coming out of the homes immersed in darkness. We split up into three groups of four men each. Two groups make their way to the immense refugee camp to the south of our position. The other group marches towards the lonely house in the flat area north of Wadi Gaza. We march forward, trampling over green fields, wading through water canals as the moon bathes us in its scintillating light. Soon, however, the silence will be shattered by bullets, explosions, and the screams of those who are now sleeping peacefully. We advance quickly and enter one of the houses "Mann Haatha?" (Arabic for "Who's there?")
We leap towards the voices. Fearing and trembling, two Arabs are standing up against the wall of the building. They try to escape. I open fire. An ear piercing scream fills the air. One man falls to the ground, while his friend continues to run. Now we must act we have no time to lose. We make our way from house to house as the Arabs scramble about in confusion. Machine guns rattle, their noise mixed with a terrible howling. We reach the main thoroughfare of the camp. The mob of fleeing Arabs grows larger. The other group attacks from the opposite direction. The thunder of hand grenades echoes in the distance. We receive an order to retreat. The attack has come to an end.

On the following morning, the headlines will read: "The refugee camp of Al-Burj near Gaza was attacked. The camp has been serving as a base for infiltrators into 'Israeli' territory. 'Twenty people were killed and another twenty were wounded."

.. . . A telephone line blocks our way. We cut it and continue. A narrow path leads along the slope of a hill. The column marches forward in silence. Stop! A few rocks roll down the hill. I catch sight of a man surveying the silence. I cock my rifle. Gibly crawls over to me, "Har, for God's sake, a knife!!" His clenched teeth glitter in the dark and his whole body is tight, his mind alert, "For God's sake," . . . I put my tommy down and unsheath my machete. We crawl towards the lone figure as he begins to sing a trilled Arab tune. Soon the singing will turn into a death moan. I am shaking, every muscle in my body is tense. This is my first experience with this type of weapon. Will I be able to do it?
We draw closer. There he stands, only a few meters in front of us. We leap. Gibly grabs him and I plunge the knife deep into his back. The blood pours over his striped cotton shirt. With not a second to lose, I react instinctively and stab him again. The body groans, struggles and then becomes quiet and still.

From an interview with Meir Har-Tzion, Ha'aretz weekly supplement, 9 November 1965:

"Pangs of conscience? No. Why should I have any?" The man's blue eyes open wide in amazement. "It's easy to kill a man with a rifle. You press the trigger and that's that. But a knife, why, that's something else-that's a real fight. Even if you are successful, you come close to death. The enemy's blade is as close as the air. It's a fantastic feeling. You realize you're a man."
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APPENDIX 4 The Lavon Affair
Moshe Sharett's public version of "The Lavon Affair" in his statement to ‘Israel's' Parliament (Divrei Ha-Knesset, the 514th meeting, 13 December 1954):

Honorable Chairman, members of the Knesset. The trial that started two days ago in Egypt against 13 Jews is disturbing everybody and brings about an emotional turmoil and deep bitterness in the country ['Israel'] and in the whole Jewish world. Indeed, it must cause concern and anxiety in the hearts of all justice-seeking people around the universe. The Committee for Foreign Affairs and Security has alreadv dealt and will further deal with this serious issue. But at this stage I feel obliged to make a short announcement. In my speech in the Knesset on November 15 1 said "The uncontrolled behavior of' Egypt . . . does not indicate . . . that its leadership . . . is seeking moderate approaches and peace. How far Egypt is from this spirit [of moderation and peace] can be learned from the plot woven in Alexandria, the show-trial which is being organized there against a group of Jews who became victims of false accusations of espionage, and who, it seems, are being threatened and tortured in order to extract from them confessions in imaginary crimes." This gloomy assumption was verified and was revealed to be a cruel and shocking fact, by the declaration of the accused Victorin Ninyo in the military court in Cairo that was published this morning. [According to this declaration] she was tortured during the interrogation which preceded the trial and by that torture they extracted from her false confessions to crimes which did not happen. The government of 'Israel' strongly protests this practice, which revives in the Middle East the methods used by the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. The government of 'Israel' strongly rejects the false accusations of the general Egyptian prosecution, which relegates to the 'Israeli' authorities horrible deeds and diabolic conspiracies against the security and the international relations of Egypt. From this stand we have protested many times in the past persecution and false accusations of Jews in various countries. We see in the innocent Jews accused by the Egyptian authorities of such severe crimes, victims of vicious hostility to the State of 'Israel' and the Jewish people. If their crime is being Zionist and devoted to 'Israel', millions of Jews around the world share this crime. We do not think that the rulers of Egypt should be interested in being responsible for shedding Jewish blood. We call upon all those who believe in peace, stability and human relations among nations to prevent fatal injustice.
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APPENDIX 5 'Israeli' Newspaper Reveals Government's Attempt to Stop Publication of 'Israel's' Sacred Terrorism
Following are major excerpts from an article by 'Israeli' Member of the Knesset Uri Avneri, published in Hoalam Hazeh, September 23, 1980, entitled "Sharett's Diary for the Arabs." The booklet uses quotations from Sharett's diary to illuminate eight affairs which took place during the fifties. Livia Rokach did clean work. All her quotations are real. She did not ever take them out of context, nor did she quote them in a way that contradicts the intention of the diary writer. To any person who is familiar with 'Israeli' propaganda, such quotations may have a stunning effect . . . Through the use of selective excerpts from Sharett's diary, her historical research deals in detail with the following affairs:

1.Retaliation activities Quotations from Sharett show that these activities were never carried out in revenge or retaliation, as the were presented to be, but that they were the product of the premeditated policies of David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan. These policies aimed at heating the borders, as a preparation for war, and as a pretext to vacate and disperse Palestinian refugees who lived in camps close to the borders. Quotations from Sharett's book also reveal that President Yitzhak Ben Zvi hoped for an Egyptian attack to justify ‘Israel's' occupation of half of Sinai. Sharett reveals, furthermore, that the incidents on the Syrian border were also a result of an 'Israeli' initiative. Sharett details at length the reasons behind the blood-bath committed by the 101 unit, under the command of Arik Sharon, in the village of Kibya, where fifty-six innocent Arab villagers were killed. He also recites how the government decided to publish a false communique, in which this event was portrayed as a partisan action carried out by civilian "settlers."
2.The plan for the occupation of Southern Syria Sharett reveals that Ben Gurion, Dayan and Pinhas Lavon requested in February 1954 to exploit the toppling of the Syrian dictator, Adib Shishakly, by occupying southern Syria and annexing it to 'Israel'. They also requested to buy a Syrian officer who would acquire power in Damascus and establish a pro-'Israel' puppet government. These things seem more actual today in light of the deteriorating position of Hafez al-Assad and 'Israeli' declarations in this regard.
3.The intention to partition Lebanon Sharett reveals that already in February 1954 Ben Gurion proposed a large 'Israeli' operation to dismember the Lebanese state and to establish a Maronite-Christian state in one of its parts. Extended discussions were held as a result. Ben Gurion explicated the plan at length in a letter to Sharett, and Sharett answered in a long letter in which he opposed the plan vehemently, Ben Gurion was ready to invest large sums in bribing Christian leaders in Lebanon. Sharett also revealed that the chief of staff supported the plan of buying a Lebanese army officer who would be used as a puppet, and who would make it seem that the intervention of the 'Israeli' army would be in response to his call for the liberation of Lebanon from Muslim subjugation. In the eyes of today's reader this plan seems an accurate blueprint for what took place in Lebanon after that- the civil war, the establishment of the Maronite enclave of Major Sa'd Haddad and labeling it "free Lebanon."
4.The Har-Tzion Affair Sharett recites how Meir Har-Tzion of the 101 Unit murdered with his own hands five innocent Bedouin youth in revenge for the killing of his sister who crossed the Jordanian border during one of her hikes. Sharett recites, further, how Arik Sharon and Moshe Dayan covered over this abhorrent act, and how Ben Gurion foiled his decision to bring Har-Tzion and his friends to justice.
5.The Lavon Affair Sharett describes at length the nasty business in Egypt. Livia Rokach appended to the book in which Sharett reveals the truth about the affair his own lies-filled speech in the Knesset in which he claimed that the accusations against those indicted in the Cairo trials were motivated by blood libel and antisemitism. The 'Israeli' reader who read the excerpts from Sharett's diary which were serialized in Maariv, or even the eight volumes of the diary themselves cannot be shocked by these revelations, in spite of their severity. However, the impact of such a publication abroad is bound to be sharper. Indeed, the lack of legal intervention by the 'Israeli' Foreign Office prevented a wide spread dissemination of the booklet. The Arab-American organization that published the booklet does not have the means required to disseminate it widely, especially when faced with the conspiracy of silence imposed by the pro-'Israel' American media ....

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NOTES
1. In his Diary Sharett reports consultations with the 'Israeli' ambassador to Brazil, David Shealtiel, concerning the settlement in that country, of half a million Palestinian refugees - one hundred thousand "in the first stage." Sharett expresses enthusiasm for the project.
2. Negotiations on the implementation of a UN-approved plan for the division of Jordan River water among 'Israel', Syria and Jordan were conducted at the time by President Eisenhower's special envoy Erric Johnston, 'Israel', however, was rapidly nearing the completion of its own deviation project. No agreement was ever concluded.
3. In September 1979, following the publication of Sharett's Diary, an 'Israeli' citizen on a radio debate asked Arik Sharon about the massacre, in which sixty nine civilians were killed. Sharon, who personally commanded the Kibya action, and who was a loyal member of Mapai in the 1950s, according to Sharett, is today the minister in the Begin government responsible for the colonization of the West Bank and Gaza. A report on this radio discussion in the Histadrut Labor Party newspaper Davar, of 14 September 1979, gives the following comments:
The responsibility for the killing of 69 civilians in Kibya, according to Sharon, falls on the victims themselves. At that time the Arab population was used to the Army's reaching just the edge of the village, dynamiting just one house , and leaving. Therefore, the people stayed in their houses. Thus, any attempt to claim that in Kibya there was a cold-blooded action to murder women and children should be described as a completely unfounded accusation.
Sharon decided personally to give an energetic character to that action. He instructed that 600 kilograms of explosives be taken along. Forty -five houses in the village were marked to be blown up, among which was the school. The task force did not know that people were hiding in the cellars and the upper floors. The houses were blown up after a superficial examination of the ground floor alone. This is why the number of victims was so high.
Kibya was, according to all evidence, a tragic error. A more cautious commander may, have avoided it. Had Arik Sharon changed for the better since, he would have now said that he was sorry. He did not.
Davar editorialist Nahum Barnea ostensibly attacks Sharon, but in fact he obviously tends to excuse the murderous operation. Kibya was no "tragic error" but a deliberate crime, as the context of Sharon's story proves. Before going into action, Sharett's soldiers, moreover. were given a dramatic description of a previous incident in Yahud (an Arab village repopulated with 'Israeli' Jews) in which a woman was killed. Yahud served as a pretext for the Kibya attack, although it was known that Kibya had no other relation to the earlier episode. Clearly, the intention was to incite the soldiers emotionally to exterminate the greatest possible number of civilians and have no qualms about the killing of women and children. Significantly, upon his return from Kibya, Sharon reported the number of victims to have been ten to twelve: "We counted only the military dead, the soldiers of the Jordanian Region's garrison," he said in the above broadcast.
4. At that time 'Israel' was literally flooding the world with propaganda in which it catastrophically pictured itself as threatened in its daily existence by growing Arab power. It is also significant that the above disclosures were made confidentially to American Zionist leaders, who thus became involved in 'Israel's' two-faced strategy. The use of the term "Western Eretz 'Israel'" is particularly illuminating. It implies that, in contrast with their official statements at that time, the concept of' an "Eastern Eretz 'Israel'" (i.e., Jordan) has never been eliminated from the political vocabulary of the 'Israeli' leadership.
5. See Ha'aretz of' 29 June 1979, commenting on a recent wave of terrorist actions in Syria attributed to the Muslim Brothers: "If Syria assumes its Sunni character again, as it was prior to the rise of the Ba'ath and the Alawites to power, new and varied opportunities may open up to 'Israel', Lebanon and the whole Middle Fast. In view of such a possibility, 'Israel' must keep vigilant and alert: It must not an opportunity which might be unrepeatable". A quarter of a century later, The same formula is being used. In general, a close refilling of the 'Israeli' press through 1979 suggests that 'Israel' is again deploying efforts in various directions to bring about the fall[ of Assad's regime, and to install a Damascus regime which would go along with 'Israeli' policies. "'Israel' is aiming at installing a Sadat in Damascus," one 'Israeli' political figure told us in September 1979.
6. This is not to say, obviously, that no alliance between 'Israel' and the US existed prior to 1967. Through the fifties collaboration was particularly close between 'Israel's' special services and the CIA. It is certainly not accidental that following the 'Israeli' leadership's outlining of plans to disrupt Lebanon, the U.S. according to CIA director William Colby in testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees in July, 1976- "supplied arms in the fifties to Christians in Lebanon in the framework of the use of religious and ethnic minorities in the fight against communism". However, starting in the summer of 1956, and going well into the sixties, 'Israel' was dependent on France for arms supplies and could not have acted openly against France's wishes. The end of France's colonial war against Algeria and De Gaulle's growing impatience with 'Israel's' arrogance led to the termination of the French-'Israeli' special relationship in 1967, and to its substitution by the exclusive U.S.-'Israel' one.
7. 'Israel's' systematic genocide in Lebanon for over a decade, which has recently reached a degree of cynical brutality unequaled in contemporary history outside of U.S. action in Indochina, bears no justification in any case. In the light of the documentation we have presented, 'Israel's' pretense of acting in self defense and in defense of Lebanon's Christians against PLO terror becomes even more ridiculous as well as outrageous. This pretense is all too often supported by Western media and governments. Undoubtedly, ‘Israel's' permanent representative to the UN, Yehuda Blum, counts cynically on the ignorance of the general public when he says: "Lebanon's fundamental problems date back many years. The situation in the South should be considered only a byproduct and a symptom of those problems" (The Nation,15 September 1979). This is how, he describes 'Israel's' direct massacre of civilian populations and the other daily attacks, devastation and torture, carried out with U.S.-made arms and under 'Israeli' protection by 'Israel's' isolationist Maronite puppets commanded by Major Sa'd Haddad.
8. Sharett hinted that the report was clandestinely intercepted by the 'Israelis'. He also aired the possibility that Hutcheson intended to refer to elements from the Irgun, acting against his government and then rejected this hypothesis. In this connection it is interesting to recall that in a debate in the Knesset (Divrei Haknesset Hashnya, p. 654) on January 25, 1955, a Herut spokesman, Arie Altmann, attacked the government for its "weaknesses" and added: "If the government will not comply with its duties in the security field, don't be surprised if one day you will be confronted with the surprising phenomena of private initiatives, and not one initiative, but a very complex and ramified one..... ". In his Mistraim Ve'Haa Fedayeen (see note 20) Ehud Ya'ari mentions the existence at that time of a terrorist group operating in border areas under the name of "Tadmor Group" of which, he says, "no details are yet available." These disclosures suggest that a close cooperation existed at that time, on an operative-clandestine level, between the pre-state terrorist Zionist organizations the Irgun and the Stern gang, which were officially dissolved in 1948 but in fact continued to act militarily and regular army or "security" units such as the paratroopers corps and Sharon's Unit 101. The latter, Ya'ari recalls, "operated its own unpublicized 'infiltrations' into the Gaza Strip........accomplishing actions such as the attack on the refugee camp at Al Burj, near Gaza, on August 31, 1953." Further research on this subject might reveal that the extent of the acts of aggressive provocations by 'Israeli' forces across the armistice lines were much vaster than has ever been known publicly. However, the most important aspect of these relations lies in their political significance, which offers a completely new key to the interpretation of the history of the Zionist state. In fact, they constitute a decisive refutation of the accepted thesis according to which a distinct division, marked by ideological, political and pragmatic antagonisms, existed at least up to 1965 between labor Zionism and the so-called "irrational Zionism" of Revisionist origin.
9. 'Israel' launched a particularly virulent campaign about Ma'aleh Ha'akrabim, and renewed the campaign at the time of, and as a justification of, the 1956 attack on Egypt.
10. The euphemistic use of the term "retaliation" in the context of actions to be realized according to a pre-fixed plan corresponds to Dayan's description of' the "reprisal" policy. Reminiscent of notorious euphemisms from the Vietnam war ("pacification", "neutralization", "Vietnamization"), the term has been used until recently to describe ‘Israel's' massacres in Lebanon.
11. Today Sharon is minister of agriculture in Begin's government, and responsible for the colonization of the West Bank and Gaza. He was commander of the notorious "Unit 101," which engaged in actions against civilian populations across the armistice lines. In a recent radio debate (see note 3 above), Sharon was asked about this episode. "As to Meir Hartsion," Sharon said, "I want to say: it is unfortunate that there are no more men like him, with his loyalty, his love for the country, and his contribution to raise the combat level of the 'Israeli' army. It is shameful that a man who fought, and fought for you too, you call him a murderer". Davar, 14 September 1979)
12. It must be noted that the term "terrorism" was not in vogue at that time. Sharett, in fact, uses the word "revenge" and "blind revenge." It is clear that he was groping for a word that would correspond exactly to today's use of"terrorism."
13. Both texts are reproduced from the Acts of the Olshan-Dori lnquiry Commission of the "Affair," annexed to the Diary, pages 659, 664, respectively.
14. In a letter to Ben Gurion dated March 6, 1961 Sharett confirmed: "Why did I refuse then to approve the firing of Peres? Because his removal at that period would have been interpreted as an admission that the leadership of ‘Israel's' security establishment was responsible for the savage actions in Cairo" (p. 789). In general, very little is known outside 'Israel' about the "Affair" and its complicated ramifications and implications which have profoundly corroded and influenced 'Israel's' political life for years. It is therefore understandable that even an excellent reporter such as David Hirst could be misled to think that Lavon shared Sharett's moderate line ( The Gun and the Olive Branch, London: Futura Publications, 1976). In fact Lavon was an ardent "activist" who missed no occasion to preach the use of violence and this was why Ben Gurion, when leaving for Sdeh Boker, left him in charge of "his" defense ministry. Later, however, Ben Gurion began to suspect that through his activist zeal, Lavon also sought to supplant him at the head of the security establishment. Thus, a complicated rivalry involving these two members of Mapai's leadership as well, as for their own reasons and ambitions, Ben Gurion's younger heirs, especially Peres and Dayan, became interwoven in the intrigues to which the "Affair" had given rise.
15. Ahdut Ha'avoda, whose best known leaders were Yigal Allon and 'Israel' Galili, united with Mapai to form the Labor Party in the sixties.
16. The history of the attempts to organize coups d'etat in 'Israel' is also little known outside its borders. In 1957 one such attempt was plotted by a group of officers who wished to prevent the retreat from Gaza and Sinai, which Ben Gurion had reluctantly accepted under heavy international pressure. In late May 1967, it was under the threat of a military coup that Premier Levi Fishkol co-opted opposition Knesset member Moshe Dayan into his government as minister of defense, thereby definitely acquiescing in the army's decision to go to war.
17. This comment was made by Lewis Jones, an embassy aide in Cairo, who Sharett says "is considered a personal friend of Nahum Goldman and Teddy Kollek ,and is well known to us for his fair attitude to 'Israel'." Jones also expressed the opinion that 'Israeli' protests against the Cairo sentences should not be taken too seriously: "Even if there will be a hanging [death sentence] it would not be a disaster [for the 'Israelis'] ... since it will probably help [the 'Israelis'] to collect more money in the US." 18 February 1955, p. 712)
18. (7 October 1955, p. 1197). See also Kenneth Love, Suez (McGraw-Hill, 1969). Sharett here told the story of how a previous news agency dispatch on the interview with Love, attributed to Nasser the phrase "we should destroy 'Israel'." Sharett couldn't believe this to be true, and he professed to have been relieved when the correction of what was reported as a "telex transmission error" arrived, confirming his own view of Nasser's conciliatory policies.
19. A detailed comparison of the above realities with, among others, the account and analysis of the events of that period as provided by Naday Safran in his 'Israel'-The Embattled Ally (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1978) would throw a significant light on the falsifications that continue to permeate a certain Zionist- inspired historiography to this day. According to Saf'ran, Nasser's attitude shifted in 1955 "from one of apparent moderation to one that seemed bent on ... leading the Arab States in an assault on lsrael" and the "apparent willingness of the Arab States to accept Jewish State" changed in the mid-fifties to a "commitment to eliminate that State," (See also note 20.)
20. See Abu Iyad, Palestinians Sans Patrie (Paris: n.p., 1979) and Ehud Ya'ari, Mitsraim Ve'Ha Fedayeen (Givat Haviva, 1975). The first, by one of the leading figures of Fatah, provides a direct account, from personal experience, of the Egyptian repression of the attempts by the Palestinian refugees in Gaza to organize resistance cells. The second consists of a collection of documents captured by the 'Israeli' intelligence during the 1956 and 1967 wars in Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank, which demonstrate the efforts by the Egyptian and Jordanian governments to suppress any infiltration to 'Israel', control the borders, and repress the demands by the population for adequate defense measures to protect them against 'Israeli' incursions, including the demand for a distribution of arms. The following constitute the main points in the evidence contained in Ya'ari's documents:
-At the end of 1953, the Egyptian administration of Gaza reported to the War Ministry in Cairo on arrests of infiltrators and actions to block their access routes to the border. At that same time police and army troops were employed in refugee camps attacked by 'Israel' to disperse demonstrators asking for arms and protesting plans to settle Palestinian refugees in an area near Al Arish. A special civil guard force was created at the end of 1953 to control the Palestinian refugee camps. In 1954 this force was reinforced. In that year, the Egyptian representative in the Mixed Armistice Commission replied to a complaint by 'Israeli' representative Arie Shalev in regard to infiltrations: "We are not sending them, and as far as we are concerned, you can kill them." "There is not one single Egyptian document [among those captured and examined] that speaks positively of infiltrations or sabotage actions. On the contrary, they all reflect an official policy of suppression and energetic directives to this effect," according to Ya'ari's conclusion. This has been confirmed also from other sources:
General E. L. M. Burns, who was the head of the UN Observers Corps in the Middle East, reported in his book Between Arab and 'Israeli' (London: n.p., 1962) that Nasser told him in November 1954 that he wanted calm to reign in the Gaza Strip.
Keith Wheelock, in his Nasser's New Egypt (London: n.p., 1960) wrote that it was "clear that the Egyptian government wishes to avoid fighting along the border, if only because the great plan for internal development left very limited resources for a reinforcement of the Egyptian army."
Among the documents presented by Ya'ari there is also a memorandum of a meeting held at the office of the Egyptian governor of the Gaza Strip, Yussef Al Agrudi, on January 29, 1955, one month before the 'Israeli' attack on Gaza, in which the following measures aimed at controlling the border were decided among the rest :
Prohibition of traffic from sunset to dawn in the area east of the Gaza-Rafah road, including the refugee camp of Jebelyiah.
An order to open fire on any infiltrator. All the mukhtars (village chief) were required to report persons missing from their villages or tribes. Warnings were to be issued through the media against infiltration. A detention camp was to be set up for persons suspected of infiltration against whom no sufficient evidence existed to bring them to trial.
Distribution of food rations to refugees who did not appear personally to receive the rations would be stopped.
According to Ya'ari, finally:
The 'Israeli' army attack on Gaza on February 28, 1 955 was ... a decisive turning point in the relations between 'Israel' and Egypt. Nasser as well as many Western diplomats and analysts have spoken of it as a turning point in Cairo's policies. Nasser himself explained on innumerable occasions that the attack was the moment of truth in which he understood there was no chance for the [conciliatory] line adopted by Egypt until then. He finally perceived the dimensions of the 'Israeli' problem. and therefore appealed for Soviet armaments . . . .
The Gaza action occurred at a moment of relative tranquility following the enforcement of repressive measures decided on by the Egyptian administration in the Strip. Hence, the explanation for Ben Gurion's decision to order the attack ... is to be sought elsewhere.
The 'Israeli' attack on Gaza unleashed huge demonstrations in the Strip and clashes between the local population and the Egyptian army. Due to further 'Israeli' provocations the protests continued, and in May the Egyptian government was forced to consent to the activities of fedayeen units for sabotage actions in 'Israel'. These units were, however, placed under the strict control of the Egyptian army so that their activity could again be limited several months later. "In any case," is Ya'ari's conclusion, "there is no doubt that the appearance of Fedayeen under direct Egyptian guidance was a phenomenon which emerged following-the 'Israeli' attack on Gaza."
It is worth mentioning here that the documents presented by Ya'ari also include detailed information on two terrorist actions undertaken by 'Israeli' intelligence in July 1956. In both cases senior Egyptian officers were killed by explosive packages, disguised as books. In the first case, the victim was Lt. General Mustafa Hafez, the commander of Egyptian intelligence in the Gaza Strip. Hafez emerges from the documents as a man who opposed infiltrations into 'Israel' as well as the inclusion of Palestinians in the Civil Guard. In fact in a forged version of the circumstances of his assassination, 'Israel' tried to attribute the murder to a settling of accounts on behalf of outraged refugees, having obviously reason to believe that this version would be accepted as credible. The other victim was the Egyptian military attache in Amman, according to Ya'ari, Hafez's collaborator in the recruitment of Fedayeen and their infiltration into 'Israel' from Jordanian territory. Ya'ari states that on the basis of the documents in his possession, the contradiction in the description of Hafez's role remains unsolved. The episodes, however, conform to Sharett's conviction in regard to the unrestrained use of terrorism by 'Israel's' security establishment.
On the other hand, Sharett's Diary confirms beyond any doubt that ‘Israel's' security establishment strongly opposed all border security arrangements proposed by Egypt, Jordan or the UN.
A UN-Egyptian proposal that mixed Egyptian-'Israeli'-UN patrols operate along the borders to prevent infiltration and mining came to Dayan's knowledge, Sharett noted. The chief of staff exploded with rage. "But I don't want the UN to prevent mining". Obviously, he considered the deterrent effect of the mixed patrols proposal on 'Israeli' incursions into the Strip (see note 8) as more damaging to 'Israel's' security than the occasional infiltrations from the Strip into 'Israel'. In fact, Ben Gurion rejected the proposal] on the grounds that it "will tie our hands"
21. See Noam Chomsky in The Nation, 22-29 July,1978, pp. 83-88 for a review of five books on US.-'Israeli' relations, and his article "Civilized Terrorism" in Seven Days, July 1976, pp 22-23.