Kafr Qasim Massacre: “Israeli” Cmdr. Said Fatalities “Desirable”

By Staff, Agencies

The “Israeli” Occupation Force [IOF] on Friday released court documents from the trial of perpetrators involved in the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre, in which Border Police killed Palestinians of the 1948 Occupied territories.

The transcripts quoted an “Israeli” Border Police squad commander as saying that “it was desirable for there to be a number of fatalities," according to The Jerusalem Post.

Dozens of residents, including children, of Kafr Qasim – an Arab town in the occupied West Bank – were shot and killed by “Israeli” Border Police officers when they returned home without knowing the time that a curfew began was changed.

The massacre took place on the first day of the Sinai Campaign in October 1956, when Palestinians inside 1948 Occupied territories were still subject to martial law.

At the time, the IOF feared that a clash with Egypt would ignite an all-out war, including with Jordan on its eastern front, then near Kafr Qasim, prompting a curfew to be implemented.

In May, the “Israeli” entity’s Military Court of Appeals announced that hundreds of pages from the trial would be published following a March ruling, Haaretz reported.

The court’s decision came five years after a historian of the Akevot Institute for “Israeli”-Palestinian Conflict Research Adam Raz filed a suit petitioning for the sealed protocols to be made public.

The “Israeli” entity initially refused to release the transcripts, claiming their content could jeopardize national security.

According to the released protocols, company commander Haim Levy confirmed there was an order to shoot anyone who broke the curfew, even if they did not know about the ordinance.

He noted that his battalion chief Shmuel Malinki said it was “desirable that there be a number of casualties,” and that if there were deaths on the first day, it would make the rest of the curfew easier.