Safad district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
Al-Na'ima
الناعمة
Al-Na'ima lay flat on the northwestern Hula plain, twenty-six kilometres from Safad, with a boys' elementary school, the shrine of a local sage called al-Shaykh al-Wayzi half a kilometre off, and 4,122 of its 4,450 Arab-owned dunums under irrigation or orchard. After the fall of Safad on 10–11 May 1948 its people, worn down by mortar fire and psychological warfare, left on 14 May. There is no account of what happened to the village afterwards, and today the site is hardly recognisable.
See Al-Na'ima on the Atlas33.1882°N · 35.5950°EAl-Na’ima stood on flat land in the northwestern part of the Hula plain at about 75 metres, twenty-six kilometres from Safad. A secondary road linked it to al-Khalisa and to the highway running down to Safad and Tiberias. The Survey of Western Palestine described it in 1881 as a stone and mud village on the Hula plain containing about a hundred Muslims. Its population was predominantly Muslim, and it had a boys’ elementary school. A shrine dedicated to a local sage, al-Shaykh al-Wayzi, stood about half a kilometre from the site, as did a stone quarry.
The 1931 census counted 858 people, all Muslims, in 174 houses. The 1944/45 statistics counted 1,030 Arabs alongside 210 Jews. Of 7,155 dunums, 4,450 were Arab-owned; 156 dunums were allocated to cereals and 4,122 were irrigated or planted in orchards — the land here was watered ground, and almost all of it was worked that way.
Al-Na’ima was emptied during Operation Yiftach, whose main objective was to take Safad. The final assault on the city fell on 10–11 May 1948, and with it the people of several villages in the subdistrict, already worn down by mortar shelling and by the campaign of psychological warfare, left. An Israeli intelligence report records that the residents of al-Na’ima left on 14 May. Israeli troops probably entered shortly afterwards, but there is no published account of the village’s subsequent fate. Other references attribute the depopulation to the Palmach’s First Battalion on 14 May.
Ne’ot Mordekhay, built on village land in 1946, lies south of the site; Beyt Hillel, built in 1940, lies to the north, and Kefar Blum, built in 1943, about two kilometres to the southeast. Zochrot records a settlement named Na’ama on the village land. Apart from a few trees the site is hardly recognisable as the former location of a village. It has become part of the agricultural land of the plain.
Sources
Cited works
3- palquest.org — al naima(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17101/al-naima
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49302/en
- en.wikipedia.org — Al Na'ima(opens in a new tab)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Na%27ima
Connected in the archive
18 connected records18 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Al-Khalisaالخالصة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: A secondary road linked it to al-Khalisa and to the highway running down to Safad and Tiberias.
- Safedصفد
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Al-Na'ima stood on flat land in the northwestern part of the Hula plain at about 75 metres, twenty-six kilometres from Safad.
in the same district — 16 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Al-'Abisiyyaالعابسية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Safad district.
- Al-Dawwaraالدوارة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Safad district.
- Al-Ja'unaالجاعونة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Safad district.
- Al-Khisasالخصاص
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Safad district.
- Al-Salihiyyaالصالحية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Safad district.
- Al-Zuq al-Tahtaniالزوق التحتاني
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Safad district.
- and 10 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Al-Na'ima.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-naima.- MLA
“Al-Na'ima.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-naima. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-naima, title = {Al-Na'ima}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-naima}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }