Al-Ghazzawiyya

Al-Ghazzawiyya spread over a wide area of the Beisan valley, west of the Jordan and beside the Baysan–Jericho highway, two kilometres from Baysan and about 250 metres below sea level. Its inhabitants were members of the al-Ghazzawiyya Bedouin tribe, who together with the al-Bashatiwa and the al-Suqur made up the bulk of the valley’s population. They had settled there for the water and the fertile soil and lived in both permanent houses and tents. All were Muslims.

Crop cultivation and animal husbandry were their chief occupations. They grew grain principally, and fruit and vegetables, some irrigated and some rainfed, and the village was known in the region for its wool and its dairy products. In 1944/45, 5,185 dunums were allocated to cereals, 34 were irrigated or planted in orchards and 13 were in citrus and bananas. The villagers tended their animals in the Jordan valley in winter and in the highlands in summer. The 1944/45 count gives 1,020 Arabs alongside 620 Jews, and the land figure of 18,408 dunums is amalgamated with those of Ma’oz Chayyim and Newe Eytan. Tall al-Barta to the north, Tall al-Husn to the west and Tall al-Maliha to the southwest show that the area has always drawn settlement; the excavation of Tall al-Husn revealed an occupational history running from the third millennium BC to the eighth century AD, when the site was occupied by an Arab village.

The village came under Israeli control on 20 May 1948, the week after the Golani Brigade occupied the town of Baysan. Benny Morris, who calls it ‘Arab al-Ghazawiya, suggests the inhabitants may have fled under the influence of the fall of Baysan. The History of the Haganah’s account of the Baysan operation states that the Fourth Battalion of the Golani Brigade “cleansed the entire Beisan valley of bedouins.” Other references place the occupation within Operation Gideon and record that the Arab population was forced to flee to Syria or to what is now the West Bank.

No new Israeli settlement appears to have been established on the village land after its fall, but several pre-1948 settlements stand in the area — chiefly Ma’oz Chayyim, built in 1937 on a hill on the road between Baysan and the al-Shaykh Husayn bridge, and Newe Eytan, built in 1938, both on what was traditionally village land. No physical evidence indicates that the village ever existed; the whole area has been levelled and is cultivated by Israeli farmers, largely in wheat. Khalidi records that the archaeological site of Tall al-Ru’yan on the village land was turned into a waste dump.

Sources

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