The Qibya Operation in Israeli Public Memory, 1953-1985
Keywords:
Qibya Operation, Reprisal Operation, Civil-Military Relations, Ariel SharonAbstract
On the night of October 14-15, 1953, Israeli soldiers, under orders of Ariel Sharon, raided the West Bank villages of Qibya, Nalin, and Shuqaba and blew up about 40 houses in Qibya in retaliation for the murder of a Jewish woman and two children in Israel. The action, in which sixty-nine Jordanian soldiers and civilians were killed, set off a storm of controversy over the raid’s moral, operational, and political aspects.
This article discusses the changes in the Israeli discourse on Qibya between 1953 and the mid-1980s. In the wake of the attack, public consensus was overwhelmingly in favor of the raid, at least as the media depicted it. But in 1965 as the political struggle between David Ben-Gurion and Pinchas Lavon intensified, cracks began to appear in the consensus. While the operation still enjoyed general support, an ethical stain of premeditated murder was cast on it. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War and especially during the 1982 Lebanon War, this trend grew stronger. The change in the discourse over Qibya is explained by changes in the public’s attitude toward Ariel Sharon and shifts in Israeli values and identity.
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