Al-Masmiyya al-Saghira

Al-Masmiyya al-Saghira stood on the southern coastal plain forty-two kilometers northeast of Gaza, at an average elevation of 60 meters, bordered on the north by Wadi al-Zurayqa and stretched along the wadi in a northwest–southeast direction. A short road linked it to a junction of highways leading to al-Majdal to the southwest, Ramla to the northeast, and the Jerusalem–Jaffa highway. The adjectival al-Saghira (“minor”) distinguished it from its twin, al-Masmiyya al-Kabira (“major”): PalQuest records that the village was established in the second half of the nineteenth century by the hamula (clan) of al-Hurani, who left al-Masmiyya al-Kabira because of feuds with other residents, so that it was also known as Masmiyyat al-Hurani or al-Huraniyya. All of the villagers were Muslim; they sent their children to school in al-Masmiyya al-Kabira, and seven small shops in the village provided their basic supplies. Domestic water came from private wells that collected rainwater and from an artesian well, located under an ancient Christ’s-thorn tree, that belonged to the entire village. The 1931 census counted 354 residents in 73 houses — Palestine Remembered’s table also lists 261 residents in 1922 — and the British government’s April 1945 survey estimated the population at 530. PalQuest records 6,340 dunums as Arab-owned and 138 as public land, of a total of 6,478; in 1944/45, 6,126 dunums were planted with cereals, 147 with citrus and bananas, and 7 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, the citrus watered from artesian wells and the rest by rainfall. The villagers raised an estimated 4,000 animals — sheep, goats, cows, camels, and mules among them — took part in the weekly Thursday market in al-Faluja, and sold produce in al-Majdal, Gaza, and Jaffa.

None of the reached sources documents the village’s fall directly. PalQuest states that the circumstances of its occupation “were probably identical” to those of its sister village al-Masmiyya al-Kabira, occupied on 8–9 July 1948 during the Ten Days between the two truces — adding that, according to the New York Times, the villages of al-Jaladiyya and al-Tina were occupied at the same time — and quotes the Israeli historian Benny Morris that an operation by the Giv’ati Brigade in those days “precipitated the evacuation of the village.” Palestine Remembered’s summary table lists 8 July 1948, names Operation An-Far with the Giv’ati Brigade as the attacking unit, classifies the exodus cause as “military assault by Zionist troops,” and states that the inhabitants were completely ethnically cleansed; Zochrot’s catalogue entry gives 9 July 1948 while its own narrative repeats the 8–9 July range. The disagreement between the reached pages does not support selecting a single day, and only Palestine Remembered names the operation. The sources also differ on the population at depopulation: Palestine Remembered estimates 615 people in 126 houses in 1948, while Zochrot’s entry lists 620 — both projections beyond the last British estimate of 530 in 1945.

The reached sources disagree about the Israeli settlements later placed on the village’s land. PalQuest, citing Morris, states that al-Masmiyya al-Saghira does not seem to have been settled at the same time as its sister village — settled in May — though both were settled during 1949, and that the settlement established on its lands was initially named Masmiyya Bet and later renamed Masmiyya Shalom; an Israeli gazetteer cited on the same page instead places the seed-growing farm of Mashmi’at Shalom, established in the 1950s, on the land of neighboring al-Masmiyya al-Kabira. PalQuest and Zochrot both record that the settlement of Kefar ha-Rif was established on village land in 1956; Zochrot’s summary field additionally lists Yinon, a name that appears in none of the other reached pages nor in Zochrot’s own narrative. Palestine Remembered’s table estimated 3,776 refugees from the village as of 1998. The 1992 field research carried by PalQuest and Zochrot, drawing on Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains, found that virtually no trace of the village remained and that the site was overgrown with weeds, tall grasses, and a scattering of eucalyptus trees; the reached sources do not establish their condition in 2026.

Sources

• al-Masmiyya al-Saghira — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• al-Masmiyya al-Saghira — Palestine Remembered
• al-Masmiyya al-Saghira — Zochrot