Saffuriyya

Saffuriyya lay six kilometers from Nazareth and was the largest village in the district in both population and land — more than 4,000 people on the eve of 1948, farming olives, grain, and fruit across the Bet Netofa valley. Few Palestinian villages carried such depth of time: beneath and beside it lay Sepphoris, the Greco-Roman city, and a Crusader-era fortress crowned its hill.

In the summer of 1948 the village hosted a garrison of the Arab Liberation Army. On the night of 15–16 July, during Operation Dekel, Israeli aircraft bombed Saffuriyya and ground forces moved in; the population fled — many to Nazareth, many more across the border to Lebanon, where families from Saffuriyya still live in the Miye w Miye camp. The empty village was bulldozed in the months that followed.

Today the moshav of Zippori, founded in 1949, stands on village land, and part of the site is a national archaeological park visited for its Roman mosaics. Of the Palestinian village itself, the fortress and a handful of buildings and walls remain among the orchards. Saffuriyya’s memory survived most vividly through its people — among them the family of the scholar and writer Edward Said, whose mother was born there.

Sources

• Saffuriyya — Palestine Remembered
• Saffuriyya — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• Saffuriyya Village — Institute for Palestine Studies
• Palestine Open Maps