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On the evening of October 29, 1956, the IDF executed nineteen men, six women, and twenty-three children who were returning from their work in the nearby fields for violating a curfew they were never notified of. The IDF then forced other villagers to dig graves for their relatives under the cover of night, and placed a seven week gag order on any press who might have reported on it.
The southern Triangle villages had been under a 10 pm daily curfew until the morning of the 29th, when Colonel Yisskhar Shadmi requested a last-minute change to a 5 pm curfew. When giving the instructions for this change, he instructed border patrol commanders to “shoot to kill” anyone found outside after 5 pm. The new curfew was only communicated to Kafr Qasim’s mukhtar at 4:30 pm. Thirty minutes proved not enough time to notify all of the village’s workers, who were yet in the groves, fields, and quarries beyond the village. It was not long before the shooting began.
As the villagers returned home after their day’s work, they were met by the border police stationed on the road. A survivor from the first encounter, Abd Allah Samir Bdeir, reports that the guards ordered the workers to stand on the road before giving the execution order. The guards reportedly then checked over the wounded men, women, and children to ensure all were dead.
By 7 pm, the border police had killed nineteen men, six women, and twenty-three children. Later that night, the army forced several residents of a nearby village to begin digging. They would not know until later that they were digging the graves of their neighbors.
It was called the Kafr Qasim massacre
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