As residents of the Israeli Arab village of Kfar Qasem gathered Sunday to mark fifty years since Border Police troops killed 47 people returning home from work, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel warned Avigdor Lieberman that the Israeli Arab movement in Israel would not take kindly to any sort of "tests."

Addressing the new cabinet minister, Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish said, "we want to remind you before taking your seat [in government] that we are one and a half million Palestinians. I advise you not to test us. We will stay here dead or alive. But in such an event [that we die] we will not be buried alone."

Darwish said that since the establishment of the state, Israel's government has thought with brawn rather than its brain, adding that Israel would become a civil, rather than military society only when the Palestinian people establish their own state.

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Sunday marked the official anniversary of the 1956 massacre. Residents marched and visited the cemetery where the massacre's victims are buried, laying wreaths in their memory.

Kafr Qasem council head Sami Issa criticized during the ceremony the addition of Liberman's Yisrael Beiteinu to the coalition.

Lieberman has called for certain Israeli Arab communities to be transferred to Palestinian Authority control, in exchange for the retention of West Bank settlement blocs.

"This is not the way to achieve peace," said Issa.

Hadash MK Dov Khenin, and Latif Douri, who documented the survivor's stories, also participated in the ceremony.

Schools throughout Israel also marked the anniversary, following a directive from Education Minister Yuli Tamir, who instructed schools to devote time to discuss the massacre and the events that occurred following it, including the court ruling that a command was "blatantly illegal," and in such a case, soldier should not have obeyed it.

According to the directive, "The massacre and the trial that followed it have become markers in the national psyche of Israeli society and have instilled in generations of commanders and soldiers a moral border one should abide by."

On October 29, 1956, during the first day of the Sinai war, three Border Police received a command to shoot anyone who broke the curfew imposed on Kafr Qasem.

The troops shot and killed 47 of the village's residents as they were making their way home from work, unaware of the newly imposed curfew. Among the dead were women and children.

The soldiers involved in the incident were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, but all received pardons. The brigade commander was sentenced to pay the symbolic fine of 10 prutot (old Israeli cents).

A memorial commemorating the massacre was recently raised in the village. According to the Kafr Qasem municipality, a museum dealing with the events of October 29 will open its doors to the public on the incident's anniversary.