Why did the Jewish forces attack Deir Yassin?
• [Deir Yassin] was an integral, inseparable episode in the battle for Jerusalem… [Arab forces] were attempting to cut the only highway linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv and the outside world. It had cut the pipeline upon which the defenders depended for water. Palestinian Arab contingents, stiffened by men of the regular Iraqi army, had seized vantage points overlooking the Jerusalem road and from them were firing on trucks that tried to reach the beleaguered city with vital food-stuffs and supplies. Dir Yassin, like the strategic hill and village of Kastel, was one of these vantage points. In fact, the two villages were interconnected militarily, reinforcements passing from Dir Yassin to Kastel during the fierce engagement for that hill. – Abba Eban, Background Notes on Current Themes – No.6: Dir Yassin (Jerusalem: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Information Division, 16 March 1969) • …This Arab village in 1948 sat in a key position high on the hill controlling passage on the Tel Avi
* [Deir Yassin] was an integral, inseparable episode in the battle for Jerusalem… [Arab forces] were attempting to cut the only highway linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv and the outside world. It had cut the pipeline upon which the defenders depended for water. Palestinian Arab contingents, stiffened by men of the regular Iraqi army, had seized vantage points overlooking the Jerusalem road and from them were firing on trucks that tried to reach the beleaguered city with vital food-stuffs and supplies. Dir Yassin, like the strategic hill and village of Kastel, was one of these vantage points. In fact, the two villages were interconnected militarily, reinforcements passing from Dir Yassin to Kastel during the fierce engagement for that hill. – Abba Eban, Background Notes on Current Themes – No.6: Dir Yassin (Jerusalem: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Information Division, 16 March 1969) * …This Arab village in 1948 sat in a key position high on the hill controlling passage on the Tel Avi
… http://www.peacefaq.com/deiryassin.html Al-Ahram Weekly | Remembering Deir Yassin Fifty years after Deir Yassin, and in the midst of a dying peace process, the … In the end he claims that Deir Yassin was only a minor but necessary skirmish. … http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/1948/373_zgby.htm Deir Yassin – The Evidence Deir Yassin Massacre … What happened at Deir Yassin undoubtedly influenced the rest of the war of … was later claimed that Deir Yassin served as a base of … http://www.ariga.com/peacewatch/dy/dycg.
