Al-'Abisiyya

Al-‘Abisiyya stood on flat terrain in the northeastern part of the Hula plain at about 75 metres, twenty-eight and a half kilometres from Safad, close to the Syrian border and linked by secondary roads to the villages around it. A Greek boundary stone from the reign of Diocletian records a village name at the site, and archaeological evidence in the area points to Roman and Byzantine activity without being decisive. In the late nineteenth century al-‘Abisiyya was a village of adobe brick with a population of about seventy. Its people tilled the land and irrigated their crops from the many water sources around them, above all the Banyas River, and drew their drinking water from the springs that fed it. The houses were generally built close together, though less tightly on the eastern side where newer housing went up; the village expanded generally during the Mandate.

The population was predominantly Muslim. Agriculture was the mainstay, and the villagers grew fruit, including oranges, and vegetables on the far bank of the river to the south and southwest. In 1944/45, 2,830 dunums were allocated to cereals, 6,390 were irrigated or planted in orchards and 4 were in citrus and bananas. The 1931 census counted 609 people in 123 houses. The 1944/45 figure of 1,220 Arabs alongside 290 Jews is amalgamated with Kefar Szold, al-Azaziyat, Ayn Fit and Khirbat al-Summan, as are the land statistics for 15,429 dunums; there is no separate published count for the village alone. Near al-‘Abisiyya lay the khirbas of Tall al-Sakhina, Tall al-Shari’a and al-Shaykh Ghannam.

According to Israeli military intelligence the villagers fled on 25 May 1948, partly as a result of the campaign of psychological warfare implemented alongside Operation Yiftach; Benny Morris allows that the village may also have suffered a direct military assault. One of the avowed aims of Operation Yiftach was to render the eastern Galilee and the panhandle empty of all its Palestinian residents. Zochrot dates the occupation to May 1948; other references give 29 May and name the Palmach’s First Battalion.

The intent behind the emptying is visible in the paperwork. As early as 18 May — a week before the villagers left — the members of Kibbutz Sde Nechemya wrote to the head of the Agricultural Centre “asking, somewhat shamefacedly, for 1,700 dunams of the lands of el ‘Abisiya.”

Three Jewish settlements had been founded very close to the site before 1948. ‘Amir, built in 1939, and Sde Nechemya, built in 1940, stand nearer the site than the third but on land that belonged to the village of al-Dawwara; Kefar Szold, established in 1942 on what was traditionally al-‘Abisiyya’s land, lies east of the site. No trace of the village remains. The site is covered with grass, shrubs and a few scattered trees, and the land around it is cultivated by Kefar Szold.

Sources

• al-‘Abisiyya — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest)
• al-‘Abisiyya (Safed) — Zochrot
• Al-‘Abisiyya — Wikipedia