Hadassah medical convoy massacre
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The Hadassah medical convoy massacre took place during the 1947-48 Palestinian civil war, on April 13, 1948, when a Jewish medical convoy was attacked by Arab forces. Approximately 77 Jews were killed.
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[edit] The Blockade of Mount Scopus
The Hadassah Hospital on the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem was connected to Jerusalem only by a narrow access road, a mile and a half long, that travelled through surrounding Arab villages. Traffic between the hospital and the city came under occasional attacks since the outbreak of hostilities in November 1947.
At a press conference on 17 March the leader of the Palestinian forces in Jerusalem, Abdul Kader Husseini, threatened that the Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University would be captured or destroyed "if the Jews continued to use them as bases for attacks".[1] Though he did not carry through on his threat, the Arab militias began to use armor-piercing weapons and mines to attack traffic on the road. Though there was a brief lull at the end of March, attacks on road traffic had become almost constant by early April. Food and supplies had begun to run out, and fears grew that the hospital, which treated the majority of the Jewish residents of Jerusalem, might need to be abandoned.
Plans were made for a large convoy, carrying patients, equipment, doctors, and supplies, to travel from Jerusalem to the besieged hospital. Although the British commander of Jerusalem assured the Jews that the road was safe[citation needed], commanders of the Jerusalem sector of the Haganah, the irregular Jewish armed force, strongly advised a postponement due to the high tensions in the area, following the Deir Yassin massacre a few days earlier. However, the hospital staff decided to continue on with the convoy plans.
[edit] The Attack
On April 13, a convoy of 10 vehicles, mostly consisting of Jewish doctors, nurses, medical students and lecturers set off for the hospital in the early morning. At approximately 9:45, the leading vehicle was hit by a mine and the convoy came under attack by Arab irregular forces. Five of the vehicles were able to flee, but five others, including two buses and an ambulance, were unable to escape the ambush and were subject to constant machine gun fire from the surrounding Arabs. After the buses began to leak gasoline, they were set on fire by Molotov cocktails (petrol bombs) thrown by the irregulars. The British forces could have assisted but did not do so until a very late stage.[2]
[edit] Number of Casualties
Altogether approximately 77 Jews were killed by gunfire during the fighting or were burnt when several vehicles were set alight.
Among those killed was Dr. Chaim Yassky, the Director of the hospital and Dr. Moshe Ben-David, who was to be the Director of a new medical school at the hospital (the medical school would eventually be built at Hebrew University in the 1950s).
Many of the bodies could not be identified as they were too mutilated due to the fire. As a result, the decision was made to bury them in a mass grave in the cemetery of Sanhedria, Jerusalem.
[edit] Aftermath
After the attack, no convoys were able to reach the hospital for a week due to continued attacks on the road, and despite British assurances of assistance. 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 at 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 UN 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 when East Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. It is currently the largest and best equipped hospital in East Jerusalem, although smaller than the new hospital in West Jerusalem.
[edit] References
- ^ 'Husseini Threatens Hadassah', The Palestine Post, 18 March, 1948, p. 1.
- ^ http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/Hadassah_convoy_Massacre.htm
[edit] Further reading
- Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem!, History Book Club, 1972, ISBN 0-671-66241-4.
- Jacques de Reynier, A Jerusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu.
