Al-Sumayriyya

Al-Sumayriyya stood on a sandstone hill near the Mediterranean coast at about 25 metres, six kilometres from Acre. South of it were the historic aqueducts of al-Kabri, on the wadis of al-Majnuna — “the mad woman” — and Tall al-Zuhur, “the mound of flowers”, so named for its masses of wild flowers; the tell served as a recreation ground for Acre and the villages around. The al-Kabri canal ran west of the village down to the city, and the coastal highway linked it to Acre and Ra’s al-Naqura and on to Beirut. The village may have been called Katasir in Canaanite times, and its later name may derive from that of the Samaritans, who were ordered out of the Acre area in the eighteenth century and moved to Nablus, where they still live. The Crusaders called it Someleria. In the late nineteenth century it stood on a plain surrounded by clumps of olive and fig trees, with a population estimated between 200 and 400.

Many of its houses were built of sandstone, a few of adobe. All its residents were Muslims and they kept a village mosque. A school was founded in 1943 with about sixty pupils enrolled. Some worked in the village’s stone quarries, but most farmed, growing citrus, cucumbers, melons, wheat, sesame and other crops. In 1944/45, 632 dunums were devoted to citrus and bananas, 6,854 were allotted to cereals and 354 were irrigated or planted in orchards — of 8,542 dunums in all, 92 per cent was cultivable and cultivated. The 1931 census counted 392 people in 92 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 760. The village had two archaeological sites: Tall al-Sumayriyya, with carved stones, a mosaic floor, tombs, columns and stone capitals, and Abu Ataba, with an Islamic shrine and ceramic fragments.

The village was occupied on the morning of 14 May 1948, attacked by the Carmeli Brigade from the northwest and from the south, during Operation Ben-Ami. Benny Morris writes that this left “the village’s eastern side wide open to allow the Arabs to escape―which the villagers did as the units mortared the site and closed in.” The Palestinian historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif states instead that the village was captured after heavy fighting in which all the young defenders of the village perished when their ammunition ran out. The History of the Haganah says only that forces landed by sea at a point nearby and went on to take al-Sumayriyya.

Eyewitnesses give more detail, differing somewhat from all three. The village militia of about thirty-five men was defending the village and was taken by surprise by an armoured unit approaching from the south. One villager recalled that one of the men began firing into the air to welcome what he took for a unit of the Arab Liberation Army, and was fired on and killed instantly. Most of the women and children had already been evacuated to Acre and the neighbouring villages, but the men tried to repel the attack from the northwest before withdrawing, leaving behind many killed and injured. Some returned later to bury their dead but could recover only one body, in the southernmost part of the village. One of those who came back briefly reported that most of the village was destroyed. That is corroborated by a photograph published in the New York Times less than two weeks after the occupation, showing extensive wreckage in the village caused by Jewish demolition squads; the photograph was taken by the Associated Press, and its caption says the village had been used by Arabs as a sniping point on the north–south highway.

By June 1948 the Jewish National Fund had begun levelling al-Sumayriyya, with authorisation from David Ben-Gurion. Seven months later, on 27 January 1949, the kibbutz of Lochamey ha-Geta’ot — named for the Fighters of the Ghettoes — was established on its ruins; Shamrat, founded in 1948, is also on village land, and Zochrot records expansions of Regba, Shavey Tziyon, Shomrat and Bustan HaGalil onto village ground. One room from the mosque, portions of a building, segments of walls and arches from fallen houses, and graves are all that remain. The surviving part of the mosque is a square stone building with a flat roof carried on girders and crossbeams, and a round-arched doorway that is now closed. Most of the site is covered by a forest of eucalyptus interspersed with bushes and wild grass, with a cowshed on the northern section. The land nearby is cultivated by Regba.

Sources

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