Haifa Oil Refinery massacre

Template:Short description Template:Pp-extended Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox civilian attack The Haifa Oil Refinery massacre took place on 30 December 1947 in Mandatory Palestine, when 39 Jewish refinery workers were killed by their Arab coworkers in a mass lynching.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Refn<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":2">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Commission of enquiry report [into the Haifa Oil Refinery Massacre], Palestine Post, 20 February 1948.</ref>

The massacre was a response to an Irgun terrorist attack, where grenades were thrown into a crowd of about 100 day-labourers waiting at a bus stop outside the main gate of the then British-owned Haifa Oil Refinery. Six Arabs were killed and 42 were wounded.Template:Refn Minutes after the Irgun attack, Arab refinery workers and others began attacking the Jewish refinery workers, resulting in 39 deathsTemplate:Efn and 49 injuries, before the British Army and Palestine Police units arrived to put an end to the violence.<ref name=Pappep119>Pappé 1999, p. 119.</ref> The Haganah later retaliated by attacking two nearby Arab villages in what became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre, where between 60 and 70 Arabs were killed.

Background

In 1947 1700 Arabs and 470 Jews worked at the Oil Refinery, not including the British management. Relations between Jews and Arabs at the refinery had been known to be good. However, tensions rose in the wake of the pending 1947 UN Partition Plan and escalating acts of violence led to the outbreak of a civil war in Mandatory Palestine.<ref name="mew">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

On 30 December 1947, Irgun militants hurled two bombs from a passing car into a crowd of Arab workers, 6 workers were killed and 42 wounded. Irgun, who planned and carried out the attack on the day-laborers, said it was in retaliation for recent attacks elsewhere on Jews in Palestine.<ref name="Pappep119" />

Attack

Arab workers stormed the refinery armed with tools and metal rods, beating 39Template:Efn Jewish workers to death and wounding 49.<ref>Lockman 1996</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> British forces arrived only an hour after the riot started.<ref name="mew" /> According to the Jewish Agency, some Arab workers helped their Jewish co-workers hide or escape.

Aftermath

Balad al-Shaykh massacre

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The Jewish Agency condemned the Irgun for the "act of madness" that preceded the killing of Jewish workers at the Haifa oil refinery, but at the same time authorized retaliation. The Haganah mounted a retaliatory raid which became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre on the villages of Balad al-Shaykh and nearby Hawassa, where some of the Arab refinery workers lived. They fired into and blew up houses. Between 60 and 70 villagers were killed, including women and children. Zachary Lockman wrote that "the Jewish attackers killed some sixty men, women, and children and destroyed several dozen houses."<ref>Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948</ref>

Bibliography

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• Benny Morris, The Birth of The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004)
• Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006)

Further reading

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• 'The British Withdrawal From Palestine: Possible Advance of Date By Six Weeks, 17 Killed in Attack on Arab Village', The Times, Friday, 2 January 1948; pg. 4; Issue 50958; col A.