The Suez War and the Kafr Qasim Massacre

On 26 July 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company after the United States and Britain withdrew their offer to finance the Aswan High Dam. Britain and France, determined to retake the canal and topple Nasser, secretly allied with Israel, whose grievances included Egyptian-backed fedayeen raids and the blockade of the Straits of Tiran. Under a covert plan sealed at Sèvres, Israel would invade the Sinai, giving Britain and France a pretext to intervene. On 29 October 1956 Israeli forces attacked; Anglo-French troops landed at Port Said days later. Under American and UN pressure, the invaders withdrew — British and French forces by December, Israeli forces by March 1957.

That same day, 29 October, the Israeli army imposed a curfew on the Arab villages of the Triangle region near the Jordanian border, abruptly moving its start forward to 5 p.m. Villagers working in the fields had no way of knowing. As residents of Kafr Qasim returned home on foot, by bicycle, and in trucks, Border Police opened fire at the village entrances. Forty-nine people were killed, among them women and children; several more were shot in neighboring villages that evening.

The massacre could not be hushed up. Eleven Border Police officers and soldiers were tried; eight received prison sentences of between eight and seventeen years, later reduced on appeal. The trial established in Israeli case law the doctrine of the “manifestly unlawful order” — a command soldiers are duty-bound to refuse. Kafr Qasim became a founding wound in the collective memory of the Palestinians who remained inside Israel after 1948.