On 3 November Yigal Allon ordered OC of the 8th Brigade, General Yitzhak Sadeh, to investigate reports that the 89th Battalion had killed "many tens" of prisoners at Al-Dawayima.
On 8 November Eliezer Pra'i, a newspaper editor, received a letter describing the same event which he passed onto Aharon Cohen, a senior member of Mapam, one of the junior partners in the Provisional Government.
At a cabinet meeting on 14 November the committee, having encountered a lack of cooperation from the army, asked for more powers.
The cabinet voted that "the Prime Minister investigates the charges concerning the army's behavior towards Arabs in Galilee and the South."
Ben-Gurion appointed Attorney-General Ya'akov Shimshon Shapira to head the investigation, staffed by three army officers.