Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre - Inquiry

Inquiry

On that same day, 12 April, the Jewish Agency requested that the Red Cross intervene over what they called a grave Arab violation of the conventions. An inquiry conducted among the Arabs, Jews and the English suggested the circumstances were more complex. The firefight had lasted several hours, indicating that the convoy was armed. The Arabs claimed that they had attacked the military formation by blowing up the armoured cars. They were unable to make a distinction between military and civilians because, they maintained, all the Jews, including the medical personnel, had taken part in the battle. The Jews claimed that they had the right to protect their medical convoys with troops. They admitted in the end, according to Jacques de Reynier, that they had been relieving the unit at the Hadassah hospital and furnishing the troop there with ammunition with the same convoys as those of the Red Shield. This practice was justified, they said, because the role of that troop was exclusively one of defending the hospital. de Reynier repeated the position of the Red Cross, that a mobil medical unit must move around unarmed and always separately from combat units. One had a choice between having recourse to armed protection or the protection of the Geneva Conventions and the Red Cross flag. Both staging troops in a position of strategic importance, and refurnishing them with supplies, de Reynier argued, had nothing to do with the hospital's functions. The Jewish Agency had been prepared to have the troop stationed there withdrawn and its protection entrusted to the Red Cross, but was overruled by the Haganah, which insisted that convoys to the hospital could not pass unless they went under military escort. de Reynier then volunteered to put this to the test with a practical proof that an unarmed convoy could pass. The following day, without warning the Arabs, he led a small column of vehicles, under a Red Cross flag, while the following cars displayed the red shield. Their passage passed without a shot fired, and de Reynier argued that this was proof that the Arabs respected the Red Cross. The result was that leaders on both sides eventually ordered that military operations were to be separated from activities associated with medical assistance and the Red Cross.

The situation in the compound became grim, and the decision was made to evacuate the hospital in early May, leaving a staff of 200 to run a reduced 50 beds. The hospital was effectively closed by the end of May, as no supplies could reach it, though a small number of doctors and students remained. In July, a deal was worked out where Mount Scopus became a United Nations area, with 84 Jewish policemen assigned to guard the now-shuttered hospital.

In the armistice agreement with Jordan, signed on April 3, 1949, the hospital became a demilitarized Israeli enclave, with a small adjacent no-man's-land (containing a World War I Allied military cemetery under British supervision) and the rest of Mount Scopus and East Jerusalem becoming Jordanian. The Israeli government and Hadassah donors then re-founded the hospital in Israeli West Jerusalem, with the original hospital staff (Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital).

The Mt. Scopus hospital only resumed medical services after the Six-Day War.

On the 60th anniversary of the massacre, the city of Jerusalem named a street in honor of Dr. Yassky, a member of the convoy.