[1] The battle began when al-Qawuqji launched an attack against Mishmar HaEmek with the intent of taking the kibbutz, which was strategically placed beside the main road between Jenin and Haifa.

For five days, the Arab force shelled the village from a distance of 800 yards,[9] killing and injuring several civilians including students at the kibbutz's high school.

[10] The Jews had one machine gun and "not enough rifles for all the male settlers,"[11] Following the shelling, an infantry attack was launched, but it was "stopped in its tracks along the fence of the village by defenders' fire.

[13] On 7 April, a British unit suggested a ceasefire and the ALA "agreed to cease the attack" for 24 hours[14] and "called on the kibbutz to surrender its weapons and submit to Arab rule".

[15] The ceasefire was rejected by David Ben-Gurion and the Haganah General Staff, who decided instead to launch a counter-attack "to clear the ALA and the local Arab inhabitants out of the area, and to level the villages in order to permanently remove the threat to Mishmar Ha'emek,"[16] and to make it more difficult for an invading force from Jenin to push through to Haifa.

[23] On 12 April Palmach soldiers took Al-Kafrayn and Abu Zurayq, found no-one in the first village but took "fifteen adult males and some 200 women and children" captive in the second.

"[29] A Jewish Iraqi volunteer, Abdullah Dawud, fought on the Arab side as a sniper and later, after hiding his participation in the battle emigrated to Israel in 1950, a move he reportedly regretted all his life.

Members of the left wing Mapam, to which Mishmar HaEmek was affiliated, were accused of hypocrisy in following months when they complained about the destruction of Arab villages, because it was said that in this case it was what they had called for.

[33] On 14 April the Middle East scholar and member of Mapam, Eliezer Bauer (Be'eri), wrote in a letter partially quoted by Morris: Of course in a cruel war such as we are engaged in, one cannot act with kid gloves.

Only members of my kibbutz Hazorea took prisoners... Also in the village, when adult males were discovered hiding hours after the end of battle -they were killed...