Dayshum

Dayshum stood on rocky but gentle slopes at about 600 metres, overlooking the ridges along Wadi Fara, which passed to the west, twelve and a half kilometres from Safad and near the Lebanese border. Secondary roads linked it to the neighbouring villages and to the highway that led to Safad. In 1596 it was a village in the nahiya of Jira, in the liwa’ of Safad, with a population of fifty, paying tax on wheat, barley, olives and fruit, and on goats, beehives and a press used for olives or grapes. In the late nineteenth century it was described as a well-built village of about 400 residents, its houses on the side of a steep hill near the bottom of a valley and roofed with gables. It had three mills and several small gardens.

The mud and stone houses were built close together. The entire population was Muslim. Some of the residents were descendants of Algerian immigrants who had fought with ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri against the French colonialists in the 1830s and 1840s and most likely came to the region with him after his defeat and banishment to Damascus in 1847; because some of their ancestors had been horsemen in Algeria, the villagers of Dayshum took a keen interest in raising horses.

Agriculture was the major source of livelihood, partly rainfed and partly irrigated from a creek that ran through the village. The villagers grew mainly grain, fruit and olives, raised livestock and cut wood — the trees to the northeast and southwest of the village gave both fruit and lumber. In 1944/45, 4,701 dunums were allocated to cereals and 611 were irrigated or planted in orchards, out of 23,044 in all, of which 22,393 were Arab-owned. The 1931 census counted 438 people in 102 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 590. Archaeological sites nearby include the khirbas of Dayr Habib and Dayshun, holding the ruins of corrals, piles of building stones, cisterns, buildings, columns and rock-cut tombs.

Benny Morris writes that Dayshum was empty when Israeli forces entered it on 30 October 1948, in the early stages of Operation Hiram, and that it had probably been evacuated when news reached it of the massacres at nearby Safsaf and Jish, committed by soldiers of the Seventh Brigade. Units of the same brigade probably reached Dayshum later in the same operation, as they went on to annex parts of the Galilee panhandle. Given the location of the village, the inhabitants probably fled or were expelled to Lebanon; the record does not settle which.

The settlement of Dishon was established just east of the village site in 1953. Cactus and thorns grow on the ground. The only indications that Dayshum was ever there are piles of stones from the destroyed houses, and terraces. Moshav Dishon uses the land around the site for grazing and for growing apples.

Sources

• Dayshum — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest)
• Dayshum — Zochrot
• Dayshum — Wikipedia