Jaffa district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
al-Jammasin al-Gharbi
الجَمّاسِين الغربي
Al-Jammasin al-Gharbi, the western of Jaffa's two buffalo-raising Jammasin villages, had 1,080 people in 1944/45. The cited records give different dates for departure or occupation — 7 January, 26 January, 17 March, or only before 15 May 1948 — and do not reconcile them. Tel Aviv development took over the site; the sources disagree over whether Shikun Bavli counts as being on village land, and a 1992 survey recorded several Palestinian houses still standing.
See al-Jammasin al-Gharbi on the Atlas32.0926°N · 34.7971°EAl-Jammasin al-Gharbi stood six and a half kilometres northeast of Jaffa and two and a half kilometres from the seashore, on the central coastal plain beside marshland. Its name identified the people as buffalo breeders, while al-Gharbi — western — distinguished it from al-Jammasin al-Sharqi. Ottoman tax registers listed Jammasin as a tribe in the nahiya of Bani Sa’b in 1596 and recorded tax on water buffalo, but PalQuest cautions that this does not establish that the two later villages had already been built. By the eighteenth century the Jammasin had settled permanently in the area.
The characteristic dwelling was the khus, a conical or pyramidal hut made from tree trunks and branches, although some houses were built from adobe brick. Children attended school in nearby al-Shaykh Muwannis. The villagers raised buffalo, sold their meat and milk in Jaffa, used them as draft animals, and also worked citrus and other fruit land. The 1944/45 statistics counted 1,080 residents. They recorded 202 dunums of Arab-owned land in citrus and bananas, 173 dunums in cereals, and 151 dunums irrigated or planted as orchards; some villagers also worked in the German-owned citrus groves at Saruna.
The cited web records do not establish one date for either the villagers’ departure or military control. Zochrot labels 26 January 1948 as the occupation date. Palestine Remembered’s added summary says that intimidation prompted part of the population to leave on 7 January and that the village was completely depopulated on 17 March; its statistical summary also gives 17 March as the occupation date. However, the All That Remains narrative reproduced lower on that same page, and also reproduced by PalQuest, says only that Zionist troops probably took al-Jammasin al-Gharbi sometime before the British Mandate ended on 15 May. These dates may mark successive stages, but the cited pages do not reconcile them, so the archive does not collapse them into a single day.
The site survey published in All That Remains in 1992 described Tel Aviv development as having taken over the village site. It recorded several dilapidated Palestinian houses, some inhabited and others empty, among cypress, Christ’s-thorn and fig trees and castor-oil plants, with Tel Aviv apartment towers behind them. PalQuest and the All That Remains text reproduced by Palestine Remembered state that there are no settlements on village land. Zochrot instead lists Shikun Bavli, a Tel Aviv neighbourhood, as a post-1948 settlement on village land. The cited pages do not reconcile those classifications.
Sources
Cited works
3- palquest.org — al jammasin al gharbi(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17021/al-jammasin-al-gharbi
- palestineremembered.com — index(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestineremembered.com/Jaffa/al-Jammasin-al-Gharbi/index.html
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49093/en
Connected in the archive
14 connected records14 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 4 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- al-Jammasin al-Sharqiالجَمّاسِين الشرقي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Its name identified the people as buffalo breeders, while al-Gharbi — western — distinguished it from al-Jammasin al-Sharqi.
- Al-Shaykh Muwannisالشيخ مونّس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Children attended school in nearby al-Shaykh Muwannis.
- All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: However, the All That Remains narrative reproduced lower on that same page, and also reproduced by PalQuest, says only that Zionist troops probably took al-Jammasin al-Gharbi sometime before the British Mandate ended on 15 May.
- Jaffaيافا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Al-Jammasin al-Gharbi stood six and a half kilometres northeast of Jaffa and two and a half kilometres from the seashore, on the central coastal plain beside marshland.
in the same district — 10 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Abu Kishkأبو كِشْك
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-'Abbasiyyaالعَبّاسِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-Khayriyyaالخيرية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-Manshiyyaالمنشية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Al-Mas'udiyyaالمَسْعُودِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- Beit Dajanبيت دجن
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jaffa district.
- and 4 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“al-Jammasin al-Gharbi.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-jammasin-al-gharbi.- MLA
“al-Jammasin al-Gharbi.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-jammasin-al-gharbi. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-jammasin-al-gharbi, title = {al-Jammasin al-Gharbi}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-jammasin-al-gharbi}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }