Haifa Oil Refinery massacre

In 1947 1700 Arabs and 470 Jews worked at the Oil Refinery, not including the British management. Relations between Jews and Arabs at the refinery had been known to be good. However, tensions rose in the wake of the pending 1947 UN Partition Plan and escalating acts of violence led to the outbreak of a civil war in Mandatory Palestine. On 30 December 1947, Irgun militants hurled two bombs from a passing car into a crowd of Arab workers, 6 workers were killed and 42 wounded. Irgun, who planned and carried out the attack on the day-laborers, said it was in retaliation for recent attacks elsewhere on Jews in Palestine. ==Attack==

Arab workers stormed the refinery armed with tools and metal rods, beating 39 Jewish workers to death and wounding 49. British forces arrived only an hour after the riot started. According to the Jewish Agency, some Arab workers helped their Jewish co-workers hide or escape. ==Aftermath==

Balad al-Shaykh massacre The Jewish Agency condemned the Irgun for the "act of madness" that preceded the killing of Jewish workers at the Haifa oil refinery, but at the same time authorized retaliation. The Haganah mounted a retaliatory raid which became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre on the villages of Balad al-Shaykh and nearby Hawassa, where some of the Arab refinery workers lived. They fired into and blew up houses. Between 60 and 70 villagers were killed, including women and children. Zachary Lockman wrote that "the Jewish attackers killed some sixty men, women, and children and destroyed several dozen houses." ==Notes==