It happened on Monday, October 29, 1956, a little after 5 P.M. The Sinai Campaign began at about the same time. For several days, there had been talk that the Israel Defense Forces might stage an incursion into Jordan, apparently in order to disguise the true intent to invade Egypt. As part of the preparations, the army planned to evacuate the Arab villages in the "Triangle" area and transfer their residents to holding facilities in the center of the country.
The plan was given the code name "Mole." The Border Police had thought of an alternative plan: to block passage from the Triangle villages to deeper inside the state, and expel their residents across the Jordan. Both plans were cancelled when it became evident that the war was going to take place in Sinai. But according to writer Rubik Rosenthal, who exposed this story many years later, the expulsion plans "remained in the air."
A curfew was imposed on the villages of the Triangle; violators were to be shot on sight. Several dozen residents, including women and children, unaware of the curfew, were late in returning to Kafr Qasem. They came in groups, on foot, by truck or riding bicycles. Following their orders, Border Police troops stood them in rows and shot them to death, as they continued to arrive in group after group. The official count says that 47 people were killed that day; the monument erected in the village adds an old man who died of a heart attack upon hearing that his son was among the dead, and the unborn baby in the womb of his mother, who was killed.
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full: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?&itemNo=779833
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam