Ein al-Zeitun massacre

The Ein al Zeitun massacre occurred on May 1, 1948 at the Arab village of Ein al-Zeitun (also known as Ein Zaytun, Ein ez Zeitun, Ain el Zeitun, etc) just north of Safed, Israel, then part of the British Mandate for Palestine. Between 30 and 70 Arab prisoners were killed by the Palmach.

Ein al Zeitun at this time was an Arab village of about 800 inhabitants. It was believed by local Jews that Arabs from the village had taken part in a 1929 massacre of Jews in Safed.

The attack on Ein al Zeitun was conducted by the 3rd Battalion of the Palmach under the command of Moshe Kelman, as a preliminary operation to relieve the Arab siege of the Jewish quarter of Safed. Davidka mortar bombs were used for the first time. The village was taken without much difficulty. Most of the villagers fled during the battle, and the remainder, apart from 30-100 men aged 20-40 were forcibly expelled afterwards.

The Palmach soldiers then began to destroy the village. Palmach officer Elad Peled recalled that

:“ [a] t noon, our men began blowing up the village. The intoxication of victory blinded them and they went berserk, breaking and destroying property. The Jews of Safad saw Ein Zeitun blown up and crushed, and were overjoyed. This was the vengeance for the slaughter that the Arabs of Ein Zeitun carried out against the Jews of Safad and Ein Zeitim.” (Morris p. 233, Abbasi p. 14)

According to Palmach soldier Nativa Ben-Yehuda, the captive men were tied up and thrown into the deep gully between Ein al Zeitun and left for two days. Kelman then decided to "get rid of this problem altogether" but most of his men refused. Finally he found two willing to do it and the prisoners were killed. Two days later, word of the massacre leaked out and it was feared that British or UN investigators would arrive, so some soldiers including Ben-Yehuda were detailed to untie the corpses and bury them.

Confirmation of the massacre is known from other IDF sources (see Morris) and from Arab accounts (see Nazzal).

The destruction of Ein al Zeitun and the consequent massacre terrified the Arabs of Safed and probably contributed to their flight in the coming days (Abbasi, pp. 40-42).

References

*Benvenisti, Meron (2000). "Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948". University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21154-5, p. 130.
*Morris, Benny (2004). "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited". Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 222-223.
*Abbasi, M. (2004). The battle for Safad in the war of 1948: A revised study. "International Journal of Middle East Studies", vol. 36, 21–47.
*Nazzal, M. (1978). "The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, 1948". Institute for Palestinian Studies, p. 36.
*Quigley, John B. (2005). "Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective". Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3539-5, p. 61.