U.N. Starts On-the-Spot Inquiry In Israeli Shooting of 30 Arabs

Protests Probably Will Be Lodged Over Recent Disturbance at Rafah—Death Reports Differ Widely.

By RICHARD DUDMAN, A Staff Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch.

U.N. Starts On-the-Spot Inquiry In Israeli Shooting of 30 Arabs — St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 November 1956 — St. Louis Post-Dispatch · St. Louis, Missouri · 18 November 1956

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TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 17—Thomas Jamieson, Gaza strip operations director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, began an on-the-spot investigation today of a disturbance at Rafah last Monday in which Israeli troops shot and killed or wounded at least 30 Arabs.

Jamieson told the Post-Dispatch he hoped to have full details gathered in time to make a written report by Tuesday to his superior, Henry Laouisse, UNRWA director at Beirut. Jamieson said a protest probably would be lodged first with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and probably later with the U.N. Meanwhile, Lt. Col.

Chaim Gaon, military commander of the Gaza strip, gave reporters additional details about the incident. The Arab radio already has been publicizing the episode, and it can be expected to figure extensively in Arab propaganda as “the Rafah massacre.”

Gaon said 10 to 12 Arabs were killed and 18 were wounded by rifle and machine gun fire when they ignored an order to halt. Jamieson, who told the Post-Dispatch yesterday he was certain there were at least 50 dead and 35 wounded, said today he was having difficulty establishing exact casualty figures. “I still think there were about 50 killed,” he said.

Goan scoffed at Jamieson’s figures, saying they came only from the Arabs. But Jamieson said two members of his international staff, an American and an Englishman, were on the spot while the shooting still was going on and counted 15 Arab bodies. Jamieson said his staff carried 35 seriously wounded Arabs to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza where they underwent major surgery.

The incident culminated three days of unrest that started at noon last Saturday, the day after Israel’s Premier David Ben-Gurion announced by radio his conditional agreement to pulling Israeli forces out of Egyptian territory.

How this transcription was made

The scan is the two-line headline and the three-line summary; there is no body text on it to transcribe. The date, the page and the byline were confirmed against the paper’s own page: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday 18 November 1956, page 2A, by Richard Dudman. The record previously carried the month only. This record was formerly entered twice: CP-1956-003 held a crop of the headline and summary alone, CP-1956-036 the full column. They are one page, merged here on 28 October 2026; CP-1956-003 is retired.

Context added by this archive

Thirty people shot, named in the headline as 30 Arabs, and the shooting named as Israeli. What the line beneath does is turn it back into a question: the event becomes a disturbance, the response is a protest that will probably be lodged, and the count is unsettled because death reports differ widely. Rafah is named.

The archive holds no follow-up.

Cite this clipping

"U.N. Starts On-the-Spot Inquiry In Israeli Shooting of 30 Arabs," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 November 1956, p. 2. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1956-036. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1956-036