Village memory · Palestine

Ghuwayr Abu Shusha

غوير أبو شوشة

Tiberias districtDepopulated 1948

Ghuwayr Abu Shusha stood on a low hill two kilometres west of Lake Tiberias, 150 metres below sea level, with 1,240 Arab inhabitants in 1944/45 and the shrine of a Shaykh Muhammad. Forty Jewish militiamen attacked it at three in the morning on 3 January 1948, killing the mukhtar's son and a woman. Benny Morris describes an exodus in panic on 21 and 28 April with no direct attack; the villagers, interviewed a generation later in 'Ayn al-Hilwa camp, described the Palmach taking the village in a surprise attack at dawn on 24 April.