1956 Rafah Incident

The incident occurred during Israel’s brief control of the Gaza Strip in the 1956 Sinai Campaign. Israel began its assault on Egyptian military positions on 29 October, capturing the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula. Egypt’s military governor surrendered on 3 November, beginning an occupation that lasted about four months; hostilities in the wider campaign ended on 5 November.[2][3]

Rafah lies in the southern Gaza Strip astride the Egyptian border. Its refugee camp, established in 1949, was initially home to 41,000 refugees who had fled the hostilities of the 1948 War of Independence.[4][5]

UNRWA described an acute humanitarian emergency after the occupation: more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population—over 213,000 people—were ration-recipient refugees dependent on the agency’s services. Fighting and curfews disrupted normal food distribution; after limited daytime periods without curfew were permitted, ration distribution began on 5 November.[1]

On 12 November 1956, Israeli forces conducted a screening operation in Rafah refugee camp. Israeli authorities said the operation sought members of the so-called “Palestine Brigade” and people involved in fedayeen operations. The procedure included a 24-hour curfew, summoning men in specified age groups to screening points, and searching homes and huts for suspects who had remained behind.[1]

Accounts differed over how the fatal confrontation began. Israeli authorities said residents were hostile and resisted the screening, while refugees denied that resistance occurred. UNRWA’s account suggested that loudspeaker announcements did not reach some residents and that insufficient time was allowed for men to reach the screening points. Amid the confusion, many ran toward the points for fear of being late; UNRWA wrote that “some Israel soldiers apparently panicked and opened fire on this running crowd.”[1]

UNRWA said it had received lists from sources it considered trustworthy naming 111 people allegedly killed: 103 refugees, seven local residents, and one Egyptian. It did not describe this as a fully verified final count: the agency said it could not verify each death individually and that casualty lists could not be complete, in part because some people were buried early without identification.[1] Ynet, recounting the Israeli army’s position, reported that the army described the dead as “48 rioters” who had threatened troops.[3]

In its broader account of the occupation, the Israeli army said about 4,000 Egyptian soldiers, fedayeen, and Palestinian combatants remained in Gaza after the takeover, many of them dressed as civilians. It said operations to curb fedayeen attacks and confiscate weapons led to civilian harm because troops could not distinguish combatants from uninvolved civilians.[3]

UNRWA protested to the Israeli government after learning of the Rafah incident and warned that further events of this kind could make it impossible for the agency to continue its work for refugees in Gaza. The Israeli Foreign Office assured the agency that the government was urgently establishing the facts and seeking to prevent a recurrence.[1]

UNRWA also explained the limits of its investigation. It relied on its own sources, including eyewitness accounts from refugee and non-refugee employees, because the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization could not investigate casualties in Gaza during the emergency; its officers’ movements there had been restricted by Israeli authorities. UNRWA said its information was necessarily limited, although it had tried to establish the facts and prevent further violence against refugees.[1]

Israel withdrew from Gaza and Sinai in March 1957 under strong international pressure, including pressure from the United States.[3][6] The Rafah incident thus took place within an occupation lasting only several months, but in a period marked by emergency screening operations, curfews, and disrupted relief services.[1][3]

The available accounts do not settle the incident’s death toll or circumstances. UNRWA’s report is a contemporaneous record of the incident and its investigative constraints, but it explicitly treated the 111 names as alleged deaths that could not all be individually verified. Ynet’s account gives the Israeli army’s substantially lower figure of 48 and its characterization of those killed. The sources supplied here do not resolve the discrepancy.[1][3]

Figures for deaths across the wider Gaza occupation are also sharply divergent. A Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies paper reports estimates of around 1,000 deaths in Arab sources, around 200 in IDF reports, and 440–550 in UN estimates. It discusses allegations of massacres particularly in Khan Yunis, not a Rafah-specific account; those Gaza-wide totals therefore should not be treated as a Rafah death toll.[6]

Rashid Khalidi places the Rafah deaths within broader November 1956 violence in Gaza and interprets the killings as occurring after resistance had ceased and apparently as revenge for earlier raids into Israel. That is his interpretation; the Israeli military explanation reported by Ynet differs, and the available material does not establish a definitive account of motive.[3][7] A purported quotation attributed to Ariel Sharon about killing Palestinians in Rafah in 1956 has also circulated, but CAMERA says it could not locate the quotation or verify its purported interviewer and concluded that the attribution was fabricated.[8]