Kafr Qasim Massacre - Background

Background

On the first day of the Suez War, Israel's intelligence service expected Jordan to enter the war on Egypt's side. Acting on this intelligence, soldiers were stationed along the Israeli-Jordanian frontier .

From 1949 to 1966, Arab citizens were regarded by Israel as a hostile population, and major Arab population centers were governed by military administrations divided into several districts. As such, several battalions of the Israel Border Police, under the command of Israel Defense Forces brigade commander Colonel Issachar Shadmi, were ordered to prepare the defense of a section close to the border officially known as the Central District, and colloquially as the Triangle. It contained seven villages close to the border, not far from Tel Aviv, where about 40,000 Israeli Arab citizens lived. It was regarded as a strategically weak point by Israel, and regularly patrolled by soldiers to halt infiltration of fedayeen and other Arabs across the border.

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