Samakh, Tiberias
Encyclopedia
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
village located at the southern end of the Lake Tiberias in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
. It had a population of 3,320 Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s and Arab Christians in 1945. According to PalestineRemembered.com, the town's inhabitants were intimidated into leaving by Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
forces on March 3, 1948, with the remainder leaving in the wake of an assault by the Golani Brigade
Golani Brigade
The Golani Brigade is an Israeli infantry brigade that is subordinated to the 36th Division and traditionally associated with the Northern Command. Its symbol is a green tree on a yellow background, and its soldiers wear a brown beret. It is one of the most highly decorated infantry units in the...
against the Syrian army
Military of Syria
The Syrian Armed Forces are the military forces of Syria. They consist of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Air Defense Force.-Manpower:The President of Syria is the commander in chief of the Syrian armed forces, comprising some 646,500 troops upon mobilization. The military is a conscripted force;...
on April 18, 1948. Most of the former residents became internally displaced refugees
Internally displaced Palestinians
A present absentee is a Palestinian who fled or was expelled from his home in Palestine by Jewish or Israeli forces, before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but who remained within the area that became the state of Israel. Present absentees are also referred to as internally displaced...
in the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
city of Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
.
There was battle there in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: see The Destruction of the Turkish Armies during the Battle of Megiddo.
Between 1905 and 1948, the town was an important stop on the Jezreel Valley railway
Jezreel Valley railway
The Jezreel Valley railway, or simply the Valley railway refers to a historical railroad in Ottoman and British Palestine, which was part of the larger Hejaz railway and ran along the Jezreel Valley....
and Hejaz railway, being the last effective stop in the British Mandate of Palestine (the station at al-Hama
Al-Hama
Al-Hama الهامة is a small village in Syria west of Damascus on the Barada river. The town was the target of repeated raids and attacks by the Israeli military, , , ,, especially prior to the destruction of an early PLO training camp located on the town's outskirts...
was geographically isolated). Today, the grounds of Samakh are occupied by the Tzemah Industrial Zone, as well as a part of the kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
Ma'agan
Ma'agan
Ma'agan is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 323....
.
Location
The village was situated on flat land in the Jordan ValleyJordan Valley (Middle East)
The Jordan Valley forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. It is 120 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide, where it runs from Lake Tiberias in the north to northern Dead Sea in the south. It runs for an additional 155 kilometer south of the Dead Sea to Aqaba, an area also known as Wadi...
, on the southernmost shore of Lake Tiberias, only a short distance east of the point where River Jordan exits from the lake. Samakh was the largest village in the Tiberias district, both in terms of area and population, and was a major transportation link. The village was served by a station on the railroad line that ran on the Jezreel Valley railway
Jezreel Valley railway
The Jezreel Valley railway, or simply the Valley railway refers to a historical railroad in Ottoman and British Palestine, which was part of the larger Hejaz railway and ran along the Jezreel Valley....
, an extension of the Hejaz Railway. It lay on a highway that ran along the lake shore and led to the city of Tiberias in the northwest. Sailing routes on Lake Tiberias also linked Samakh with Tiberias's harbour.
History
The village was established in the early nineteenth century on the remains of Tzemah ), which was inhabited by Jews and Greeks. The village is mentioned in Mishnaic and TalmudTalmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
ic sources in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Most houses were built of adobe
Adobe
Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material , which the builders shape into bricks using frames and dry in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and mudbrick buildings. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for...
, but some were built of the black (basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...
) stone that was abundant in the Golan
Golan
Golan was a biblical city in Land of Israel. It was in the territory of Manasseh in the Bashan.Golan was the most northerly of the three cities of refuge east of the Jordan River . Manasseh gave this city to the Gershonite Levites .According to the Bible, the Israelites conquered Golan from the...
area near Samakh. Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller and orientalist. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis...
, a Swiss traveler to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
who saw the village (which he called "Szammagh"), in 1812, described it as a collection of thirty or forty mud houses that stood alongside more costly houses built of black stone. He said about 100 faddans (1 fadda = 100–250 dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
s) were cultivated in the immediate vicinity.
In the late nineteenth century, Samakh was described as a village of 200 inhabitants who cultivated the surrounding plain.
The village and its railway station were the site of a battle between British/Australian and German/Turkish forces in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. The battle ended in an Allied victory and opened up the way to Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
for General Allenby
Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby
Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby GCB, GCMG, GCVO was a British soldier and administrator most famous for his role during the First World War, in which he led the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the conquest of Palestine and Syria in 1917 and 1918.Allenby, nicknamed...
's troops. It was described by Field Marshal Wavell
Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell
Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell GCB, GCSI, GCIE, CMG, MC, PC was a British field marshal and the commander of British Army forces in the Middle East during the Second World War. He led British forces to victory over the Italians, only to be defeated by the German army...
as the most fierce and cruel battle in the Palestinian theater.
In 1923 a local council was created, which still administered Samakh by 1945. The council's expenditure grew steadily, from P£310 in 1929 to P£1,100 in 1944.
By 1944/45 the population of Samakh had increased to 3,320 Muslims, 130 Christians and 10 of other faiths. The majority of the population belonged to the settled Bedouin
Bedouin
The Bedouin are a part of a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans, known in Arabic as ..-Etymology:...
tribes of the 'Arab al-Suqur and 'Arab al-Bashatiwa. The village had two schools, one for boys and another for girls. Their chief crops were bananas and grain; in 1944/45 a total of 8,523 dunums were planted in cereals.
The village was captured by the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
in the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
The 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine lasted from 30 November 1947, the date of the United Nations vote in favour of the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the UN Partition Plan, to the termination of the British Mandate itself on 14 May 1948.This period constitutes the...
, along with the British border guard base nearby, and became a military outpost that changed hands twice in the Battles of the Kinarot Valley
Battles of the Kinarot Valley
The Battles of the Kinarot Valley , is a collective name for a series of military engagements between the Haganah and the Syrian army during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, fought between May 15–22, 1948 in the Kinarot Valley. It includes two main sites: the Battle of Degania–Tzemah, and battles near...
, between the Haganah and the Syrian Army
Syrian Army
The Syrian Army, officially called the Syrian Arab Army, is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. It is the dominant military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the senior most posts in the armed forces, and has the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the...
. On May 21, after the Syrian retreat, the Haganah set up a position in Samakh.
Today
According to the Palestinian historian Walid KhalidiWalid Khalidi
Walid Khalidi is an Oxford University-educated Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is General Secretary and co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center...
, the structure remaining of Samakh are the ruins of the railway station and a water reservoir. The members of Degania Alef also built a public park, a gas station, and factories known today as the Tzemah Factories on the village site. The Kinneret College
Kinneret College
The Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee , or simply Kinneret College, is a college located on the southern shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel....
is also located there.
The kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
im Masada
Masada, Emek HaYarden
Masada is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the northern Jordan Valley near the Sea of Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 296.-History:...
and Sha'ar HaGolan were established southeast of the village site in 1937, and have since expanded onto lands within Samakh's former jurisdiction. Both Ma'agan
Ma'agan
Ma'agan is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 323....
and the nearby kibbutz Tel Katzir
Tel Katzir
Tel Katzir is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located to the south of the Sea of Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 202....
were built on Samakh's land in 1949. The kibbutzim Deganya Alef and Deganya Bet are also close to Samakh's location, but not on land that belonged to the village.
The Tzemah road junction, between Highway 90, 92
Highway 92 (Israel)
Highway 92 is a north-south highway in northeastern Israel. It follows the eastern edge of the Kinneret from Ma'agan junction in the south at Highway 98 to Yehudiya junction in the north at Highway 87...
and 98
Highway 98 (Israel)
Highway 98 is the primary north-south highway in the Golan Heights. It is shaped like an archer's bow, and it runs parallel to the ceasefire line of the occupied territory with the rest of Syria...
, is located next to the site of Samakh, and has in its vicinity a small water park and a Burger Ranch restaurant.
External links
- Welcome to Samakh
- Samakh, from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural CenterKhalil Sakakini Cultural CenterKhalil Sakakini Cultural Center is an organization established in 1996. It is located at 4 Raja Street, Ramallah in the West Bank. The traditional manor that houses the centre was the former family home of Khalil Salem Salah, the mayor of Ramallah between 1947/1951, is now owned by the Palestinian...
- Samakh Railway Station