The Haifa Oil Refinery massacre took place on 30 December 1947 in Mandatory Palestine, when 39 Jewish refinery workers were killed by their Arab coworkers in a mass lynching.
The massacre was a response to an Irgun terrorist attack, where grenades were thrown into a crowd of about 100 day-labourers waiting at a bus stop outside the main gate of the then British-owned Haifa Oil Refinery. Six Arabs were killed and 42 were wounded. Minutes after the Irgun attack, Arab refinery workers and others began attacking the Jewish refinery workers, resulting in 39 deaths and 49 injuries, before the British Army and Palestine Police units arrived to put an end to the violence. The Haganah later retaliated by attacking two nearby Arab villages in what became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre, where between 60 and 70 Arabs were killed.
Background
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."