The Bureij 'training exercise'

Bureij was in some ways the twin massacre to Qibya. It was a coming-out party for Ariel Sharon, a young IDF major whom David Ben-Gurion appointed to command Unit 101, which he had entrusted with carrying out Israeli reprisals. There wasn’t much to retaliate for on August 28 1953, so Ariel took his month-old unit of killers on a training exercise to the relatively small and newly created Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza strip, where our merry bunch of murderers tossed bombs through the windows of sleeping Palestinians. The official death toll says Sharon’s gang killed 20 and injured 62. Others have put the death toll as high as 46. Sharon argued

I also decided that offensive action was better than giving the impression that we were attempting to escape... Therefore I invaded the camp with my group.

The Mixed Armistice Commission just didn’t understand. They called it

an appalling case of deliberate mass murder

 Harsh! The Commission concluded  

A likely explanation is that it was a ruthless reprisal raid

Supposedly, the reprisal was for some unspecified Palestinian 'infiltration' from Gaza.  

This was the first, but certainly not the last, Israeli assault on al-Bureij. Most recently, an airstrike on November 2, 2023 killed 15 people.

Nothing ever changes.