The reprisal operations were raids carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the frequent fedayeen terrorist attacks during which the armed Arab military infiltrated Israel from Syria, Egypt and Jordan to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
The objective of these operations was to deter and prevent future attacks. Two other factors that fueled the raids were the restoration of public morals and the formation of newly formed army units. Stage
Border clashes between Israel and neighboring states began almost immediately after the Green Line agreements in 1949. Along the armistice line of 1949, armed or unarmed infiltrations were frequent on both sides. The movement of the Palestinian fedayeen was particularly active in infiltrations and attacks on Israeli citizens and their property. Half of Jordan's prison population consisted mostly of people arrested for trying to return, or illegally entering Israeli territory, but the number of complaints filed by Israel about infiltrations of the West Bank shows a considerable reduction, from 233 in the first nine months of 1952, to 172 in the same period of 1953, immediately before the attack. This marked reduction was in good part of Jordan's greater efficiency in patrolling. According to some Israeli sources between June 1949 and the end of 1952, a total of 57 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by Palestinian infiltrators in the West Bank and Jordan. The number of Israeli deaths in the first nine months of 1953 was 32. During more or less the same time (November 1950 - November 1953). The mixed armistice commission condemned the Israeli raids 44 times. For the same period of 1949-1953, Jordan claimed that it only suffered 629 deaths and injuries from Israeli incursions and cross-border bombings. UN sources for that period lower those estimates. Politics
Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Israeli director of personnel Moshe Dayan ordered reprisal attacks as a harsh response to terrorist attacks. The message was that any attack on the Israelis would be followed by a strong Israeli response. In the words of Ben-Gurion, from his lecture: "Retribution operations as a means to ensure peace".
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