“Kiryat Shmona” is an Israeli settlement built on the ruins of the Palestinian town of Al-Khalisa, which was part of the Safad district in northern Palestine. After the Nakba, its people were displaced to southern Lebanon, and the occupation destroyed it and built its settlement on it, which became the regional center for Israeli settlements in the region and the largest city in the Galilee Finger.
Because of its location, it is constantly targeted by Hezbollah fire from southern Lebanon, forcing the occupation to evacuate and restore it. Because of the exodus of settlers from it, one Israeli website described it as a “ghost town.”
Label
The Hebrew word “Kiryat” means “village” in Arabic, while the word “Shmona” means “eight,” and hence the Arabic translation of its name is “the village of eight.”
This name, according to the Israeli narrative, came in memory of 8 settlers who were killed in a war they fought with Khalsa Arab leaders in the Battle of Tel Hai in 1920, which took place near the city.
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It is located in northern Israel and 4 kilometers from southern Lebanon. It overlooks the Hula Plain from the north and south, and is bordered by a number of Palestinian villages, including in the north and northeast the villages of Zouk al-Fawqani, Zouk al-Tahtani, and the village of Lazaza.
To the east, it is bordered by the village of Qaytiya, to the northwest by the village of Hunin, to the southeast by the village of Al-Naameh, to the south by the villages of Al-Buwayziyah and Al-Mays, and to the southwest by the village of Al-Manara.
Its area is approximately 15 square kilometers, and it was crossed by a main road, recently called Highway 90, linking Houla and southern Lebanon, and also with the Golan Heights via Banias and Quneitra.
Population
As of the end of December 2023, the number of settlers in Kiryat Shmona was estimated at approximately 23 thousand settlers, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. They were all displaced after the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle and due to the continuing strikes of the Lebanese Resistance Front.
In 1931, the village’s population was 1,369, and the majority were Muslim Arabs, in addition to Christian Arabs, with the presence of 3 Jews, and the total number of its homes in that year was 259.
A traveler mentioned that its population at the beginning of the British Mandate was approximately 50 people, then in 1945 and before the Israeli occupation, their number reached 1,840, including only 20 Christians, and it had one primary school for boys, run by teachers from neighboring villages.
The population at the time of the Nakba was 2,134, and the number of their homes at that time was estimated at 403, and the area of the village’s lands amounted to 11,280 dunums (a dunum is equivalent to a thousand square metres). Until 1998, the number of its refugees was estimated at 13,108.
The original inhabitants of this village are villagers from the Ghawarna clan, with different origins. Historian Abdul Karim Al-Hashash mentions that they are Arabs, some of them from Morocco and from Ahmed Al-Jazzar’s army, and some of them came from Egypt and Sudan and settled with them. He confirms that they were not nomads, as is commonly said. Despite the appearance of their nomadic life, they They were peasants and had their own customs and traditions.
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Ottoman administration
At the beginning of the 19th century, Al-Khalisa was a stop for Arab nomads during the winter. According to historian Mustafa Al-Abbasi, Al-Khalisa, at the end of the Ottoman Empire, belonged to the Marjayoun District, and at that time it was a small village.
In 1875, the French traveler Victor Guerin described it with its many streams, springs, and ruins. He said that it was a modern village built on top of a hill overlooking the Hula Plain, and around it the residents planted their crops, which they irrigated from the “Ain al-Dhahab” springs.
It is noteworthy that the Ghawarna clan was the one who established the village, and it was located on a hill in the northwest of the Hula Plain, a strategic location that protected it from seasonal floods passing on Lake Hula. It was considered an important commercial center due to its proximity to Syria and Lebanon, and it overlooked a public road extending from Metulla north to Safed and Tiberias to the south.
European travelers in 1877 described it when they passed by it as a small village built with stones on flat land surrounded by streams and inhabited by dozens, most of them Guarana. Its houses were built of bricks and basalt stone that its people uprooted from the hill.
In 1916, the Ottoman officials Bahjat and Al-Tamimi visited it during a field survey they were conducting in the state of South Lebanon. They mentioned that the residents of Al-Khalisa lived in black tents. They described the warmth and warmth with which they were received and the village sheikh’s house and its spaciousness (the Al-Youssef Palace). They said that the Al-Youssef family was the strongest and the wealthiest. She owned about 6 thousand dunams of land.
British Mandate
After the end of Ottoman rule and the beginning of the British Mandate, the road network developed, which stimulated trade between Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Then Britain built a police station in 1938 with the aim of enabling its control over the northern borders, and a year later the Jews established a village settlement there, which they called “Kiryat Shmona.”
During the British Mandate, the city was administratively affiliated with the Safad district and was considered one of its villages and the second largest village in terms of area and population. In its last years before its occupation, it became a municipal center, and it was 28 kilometers away from the center of the district.
The cultivated area of the village’s lands between 1944 and 1945 amounted to about 3,770 dunums, and its residents held a weekly market with goods from the village’s people, from neighboring villages, and even from neighboring countries.
Due to the increase in the number of employees and workers over the years, a branch of the “Palestinian Arab Workers” Association was established in Al-Khalisa in 1946. In 1945, the village had a municipal council that managed its affairs, and its residents practiced agriculture and trade to earn their living.
The population was supplied with drinking water from springs, rivers, and springs, the most famous of which is the Hasbani Spring from the eastern side, in addition to the “Honey Spring” and the “Gold Spring,” which was 5 meters deep in an area of 200 square metres.
Al-Abbasi mentions that the village participated in an uprising that broke out in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine in 1920 against the division of the region and the demarcation of the borders between France and Britain, especially since Al-Khalisa became a border region, and the French forces responded by bombing the village in February 1920.
In the midst of these events, the “Village Association” was established, which was established to support the farmers of Safad and the Houla region to confront attempts to sell lands to settlers. Houla became prominent in that its sheikh, Kamel Hussein Youssef, headed the association in 1932. His position in the region was strengthened and he emerged as a leader of the rest of the sheikhs of the region due to the influence that the association enjoyed. .
Israeli occupation
On December 18, 1947, a Jew was killed in the village of Al-Khasas, which is 5 kilometers away from Al-Khalisa. He was from a Jewish village located next to that village called “Ma’yan Baruch.” The Zionist Palmach military organization decided to launch a “disciplinary campaign” and killed 10 people from the people of Al-Khasas. Among them is a woman and 5 children.
This incident was the beginning of a series of offensive events that spread throughout the entire Houla, adopted by the Palmach. It affected Al-Khalisa, which was a point of contact between Jews and Arabs in the region, and its commercial activity began to decline, until Britain announced its withdrawal from Palestine and handed it over to Israel. Less than a month later, the Zionist military organization the Haganah occupied the city. Safed after Tiberias and the Arabs were expelled from it.
The Jephthah Brigade began Operation “Matati,” which means the broom, and intended to destroy the entire area extending from the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee to the southern plains of Hula. It completely destroyed the Arab villages in the region and evacuated the residents. It was said that Al-Khalisa tried to reach an agreement with the Haganah to protect its people, but the organization refused.
On May 11, 1948, the residents of the Palestinian village fled their town after they heard the fall of the Safad District under the grip of the occupation. They went to the village of Hunin in the northwest, and some of the Mujahideen (between 35 and 40) of them remained for a few days waiting to meet the occupation soldiers, but they were surprised by a severe bombing that targeted The village is from the Jewish settlement of Manara, and it was rumored that an armored unit was advancing towards them and asking them to leave before it arrived.
After the intense bombardment, the Mujahideen withdrew away from the roads controlled by the occupation and headed to the hills, and from there they joined their families in Hunin, from where the entire village people were displaced to Lebanon. Weeks later, a group of them returned to the village in search of their money, which they had buried underground, but they found the village in ruins.
Then the Kiryat Shmona settlement was established on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Al-Khalisa, which was destroyed by the occupation and its features erased in 1948. Its aim was to distribute settlers throughout Palestine, especially the border areas, to enhance security control therein to prevent the return of the Palestinians.
Kiryat Shmona
After its occupation, the city is now considered the largest city in the Galilee Finger, so it has become a regional center in health services, industry, business and trade. It is located near Highway 90, and it still maintains its picturesque natural scenery.
Israel established the Jewish settlement in 1950, and it was inhabited by 14 Yemeni Jews. After 3 years, it had a municipal council, and was declared a development city with the arrival of Jews from Yemen and Romania, and later from North Africa, especially from Morocco.
The settlement developed in the field of medical manufacturing, research and development in the field of agricultural biochemistry, electronics, and metal processing, and until the beginning of the 1970s it developed in the spinning industry and other industries related to agricultural products.
Because of its geographical location adjacent to the Lebanese border and its proximity to the occupied Golan Heights, it became a target of Palestinian resistance fire on the one hand and Lebanese resistance on the other. In 1974, the Palestine Liberation Front killed 18 settlers there.
In 1986, Hezbollah killed one person, in 1987 it killed 6 soldiers at a military base near the settlement, and in 1999 the party also killed two people. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, settlers left the village for shelters, during which they were exposed to 4,000 shells that destroyed 7,000 apartments.
With the military escalation with the Lebanese Hezbollah in October 2023, Israel began activating the plan to evacuate the Kiryat Shmona settlement of its residents, following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian factions on October 7 on the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip. .
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas in Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the bombing of Kiryat Shmona on November 2, 2023, noting that it targeted the settlement and its surroundings with 12 missiles “in response to the occupation’s massacres in Gaza.”
Kiryat Shmona was bombed with dozens of missiles from Hezbollah in response to Israeli attacks that killed paramedics on January 11, 2024, and on March 5 with about 70 missiles as well, after villages in southern Lebanon were subjected to Israeli bombing that led to the death of 3 civilians.
Economy
Previously, the village’s residents relied on agriculture, livestock raising, and trade. Its agricultural land and abundance of water contributed to the development of agricultural activity. The area of arable land was estimated at 9,361 dunums, of which 5,586 dunums were for irrigated orchards and 3,775 for growing grains. The village’s crops varied between wheat, barley, corn, beans, chickpeas, lentils, tomatoes, eggplant, and cucumbers.
The village was active in trade with Lebanon and Syria due to its proximity to them. The residents held a weekly market known as the “Tuesday Market” in which merchants from Syria and Lebanon participated. They would gather on Mondays in preparation for the big market day, during which the villagers would display their products and industries. Due to its activity and importance, merchants from Safed tried to buy it, but the village residents refused to sell it.
The market was held in the Al-Amrat area, next to the Saraya building of the Mandate authorities. It was considered the largest market in the region after the Friday market in Safed. It was attended by Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Jordanian, and Palestinian merchants, and sometimes they would spend the night in the village at the Zatam Hotel, whose owner was a Lebanese man.
After its occupation, the settlement now depends on many industries, including metallurgy, jewelry manufacturing, canning, and textile manufacturing. In addition to the presence of an agricultural technology laboratory.
Milestones
- Al-Khalisa Mosque, built in 1906, and the occupation turned it into a court headquarters, before turning it into the “Kiryat Shmona Museum,” then closing it completely.
- The Israeli International Center for Food Technology, which opened on September 2, 2020.
- An airstrip used for civil aviation training.
- Abandoned buildings from the days of the British Mandate in Palestine.
- Kamel Hussein’s house, which Israel turned into an art school and became affiliated with the Jewish Agency.
- Among its ancient landmarks that were destroyed by the occupation were the municipal council building, a hotel known as the “Zattam Hotel,” and two grain mills, the first of which was built near the Gold Spring and the other near the Honey Spring. In addition to the Saraya building, which was built by the British Mandate authorities.
