Mass grave sites of executed Palestinians revealed under modern beach resort

A study by British historians of the Israeli massacre in a Palestinian village in 1948 revealed the sites of mass graves. An investigation into the massacre in a destroyed Palestinian village by Israeli forces during the 1948 Israel Establishment War identified three possible mass graves beneath a modern beach resort.

Palestinian survivors and historians have long argued that the men who lived in Tantura, a fishing village of about 1,500 near Haifa, were executed after they surrendered to the Israeli Alexandroni Brigade, and their bodies were thrown into a mass grave, which, believed to be under what is now the car park at Dor Beach. Estimates of the number of victims ranged from 40 to 200 people, writes The Guardian.

In recent years, the growing evidence of the Tantura massacre has sparked considerable controversy in Israel, where, according to The Guardian, the atrocities committed by Jewish militias in 1948 remain a highly sensitive topic: an Israeli-produced documentary about what happened in the village clashed with widespread backlash after its release last year.

A new extensive investigation by research agency Forensic Architecture has revealed what it says is a second mass grave in the former village of Tantura, as well as two more possible locations in the most comprehensive study to date.

Forensic Architecture, based in Goldsmiths, University of London, analyzed map data and aerial photographs from the British Mandate era, comparing them with archival and newly collected testimonies from survivors and perpetrators, as well as documents from the Israeli army. The data has been used to create 3D modeling that identifies likely locations for executions and mass graves, as well as the boundaries of pre-existing cemeteries and whether any graves have been exhumed or removed.

The Tantour report was commissioned by the Palestinian legal group Adalah. Based on the findings, the group filed a first-of-its-kind legal petition in Israel on Wednesday, on behalf of several Tantour families still in the country, to delimit plots.

“The rights of families to visit these sites and the right to a decent burial have obviously been violated under both Israeli and international law,” said Suhad Bishara, Adalah’s legal director.

The previously identified Tantura mass grave was described as being located in an open field, next to prickly pear bushes and three trees, and is now believed to be below a car park, although the site has not been exhumed or excavated.

The second burial, located in an orchard not far from where the village square used to be, bears a resemblance to the first and is also now believed to be under the concrete of the car park. On aerial photographs, both objects appear as long thin earthworks approximately 3 by 30 meters in size, oriented along an east-west axis and located on the northern border of the open field.

It is believed that one of the possible places of execution was the courtyard behind the house of the Haj Yahya family. Many years later, human bones were reportedly found at the site, leading researchers to conclude that there could also be a mass grave there.

Adnan Haj Yahya, now 92, was 17 years old when Tantura was captured by Israeli forces. Over the years, he has testified in several scientific and journalistic publications that soldiers forced him and a friend to dig a grave at the site and throw dozens of bodies into it.

“I will never forget that day, it is still very clear to me. That day I lost faith in God,” Haj Yahya said by phone from his home in Germany. “The world should know what happened to us at Tantura.”

The Committee of the Tantour and Adal families hope that the forensic-architectural investigation will lead to further investigation into the events of 1948, which the Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe. About 700,000 people – about half the population – were uprooted or fled their homes during the war to create the State of Israel, and about 500 villages were destroyed.