page_title: Al-Dawayima massacre
section_title: The UN inspection team
hierarchical_section_title: Al-Dawayima massacre / The UN inspection team
caption_attribution_description: English: Members of the 89th Battalion outside Beit Gurvin, during Operation Yoav, October 1948
context_page_description: The al-Dawayima massacre describes the killing of civilians by the Israeli army that took place in the Palestinian Arab town of al-Dawayima on October 29, 1948, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The incident occurred after the town was occupied by the IDF's 89th Commando Battalion during Operation Yoav, encountering little resistance. The battalion, whose first commander was Moshe Dayan, was composed of former Irgun and Lehi forces.
  Benny Morris has estimated that hundreds of people were killed. Lieutenant-General John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion stated the numbers were much smaller, citing a UN report for a figure of 30 women and children killed. A follow-up report delivered to the United Nations by a delegation from the Arab Refugee Congress reported that the Arab Legion had had an interest in underplaying the extent of the massacre, which was, it claimed, worse than the Deir Yassin massacre, in order to avoid further panic and refugee flight. The village mukhtar Hassan Mahmoud Ihdeib, in a sworn statement, estimated the number of victims as 145.
context_section_description: Yigal Allon cabled Général Yitzhak Sadeh to check "the 'rumours' that the 89th Battalion had 'killed many tens of prisoners on the day of the conquest of al-Dawayima', and to respond". On the 5 November probably worried about a UN investigation Allon then ordered Sadeh to instruct the unit:
  that is accused of murdering Arab civilians at Dawayima to go to the village and bury with their own hands the corpses of those murdered.
  Although unbeknownst to Allon, the 89th had cleaned up the site of the massacre on 1 November 1948.
  
  On 7 November, UN inspectors visited the scene of the village to investigate accusations of a massacre, the accusation being made by the Egyptians and refugees from the village. The team found "several demolished buildings and one corpse but no other physical evidence of a massacre". The UN team did however take a witness statement from the village mukhtar
  Isser Be'eri, the commander of the IDF intelligence service, who conducted an independent investigation, concluded that 80 people had been killed during the occupation of Al-Dawayima and that 22 had been captured and executed subsequently. Be'eri recommended prosecution of the platoon OC, who had confessed to the massacre, but notwithstanding his recommendations no one was put on trial or punished.
  On 14 November the Israeli cabinet instructed Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to also launch an investigation. Its findings remain secret.
caption: Members of the 89th Battalion outside Beit Gurvin, during Operation Yoav, October 1948
exif: {"Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "90", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "274", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11644", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "548", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "495", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}