Sixty-six years passed after hundreds of Palestinians have been killed during the massacre of Khan Younis yet this horrible bloodshed is barely mentioned in Palestinian history. Each year another chance arises to uncover the truth of the massacre.
Between the third and the twelfth of November 1956 the Israeli army perpetrated a massacre in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip brutally killing hundreds of Palestinian citizens.
Palestinian sources reported that at least 500 Palestinians in Khan Younis were killed on the 3rd of November while the UN documented the number of Palestinians killed on that day as 275 which it described as “credible”.
There is no mention of a massacre committed by Israeli forces in documents of the United Nations. And it didn’t bear any responsibility or provide legal notes to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Uncovering Truth
On the other hand writers and journalists were dedicated to shedding light on detailed events of the massacre. For example the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta wrote a memoir rich with oral histories and personal recollections of the massacre.
In addition the western journalist Joe Sacco researched the massacre in his 2009 graphic novel “Footnotes in Gaza” highlighting that another incident in Rafah drew his attention while he was investigating the massacre.
The incident that drew his attention was an extension of the massacre as at least 100 Palestinian residents in Rafah were killed after the loudspeakers of the occupation military vehicles called on all youths and men from the age of 16 and up to the age of fifty to leave their homes the soldiers firing at them with automatic weapons.
In fact the Israeli army by this killing aimed at rooting out the presence of Palestinian resistance fighters who were fighting under Egyptian command as the massacre came against the backdrop of a war waged by Israel Britain and France against Egypt.
Attempts to eliminate resistance bound to fail
Witnessing the killing of his uncle during the bloodbath in Khan Younis the senior official of Hamas Abed El-Aziz El-Rantisi who was assassinated by Israel in 2004 was nine years old. “I still remember the wailing and tears of my father over his brother” Rantisi recounted adding that he couldn’t sleep for many months after that. “They planted hatred in our hearts” he concluded.
Despite the killing of a hundred youths and men the Israeli army was not aware of the power of the vivid memory of the 9-year-old child who devoted his life to turning the sleepless nights full of anguish and rage over the loss of his uncle into decades of resistance.
Thus such a massacre an “orchestra of hell” as described in Salman Abu Sitta’s memoir seems to be a failed attempt to wipe out the Palestinian resistance.
