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Ijzim

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aliases

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Summary

Coastal village of 3,000 south of Haifa, the largest and longest-resisting of the three villages attacked in Operation Policeman during the second truce; it fell on 28 July 1948 after the Israeli air force was brought in, its population expelled to Jenin, in Pappe’s account.

Details

  • Ijzim was one of the three villages in the coastal area south of Haifa that a massive Jewish force failed to capture during the ten days between the truces; Ben-Gurion ordered the occupation effort to continue even after the second truce came into effect, and the High Command reported the assault to the UN truce observers as a policing activity, choosing the codename Operation Policeman (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.197).
  • Operation Policeman (Shoter) began on 25 July, exactly one week into the ‘truce’, and Ijzim survived another three days of fierce fighting, a small number of armed villagers holding out against hundreds of Israeli soldiers until Israel brought in its air force to break the resistance (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.197-198).
  • When the fighting was over the population as a whole was expelled to Jenin. One hundred and thirty villagers died in the battle according to the survivors’ recollection; the Israeli intelligence officers of the northern front reported on entering the village on 28 July that “our forces collected 200 corpses, many of them civilians killed by our bombardment” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.198). The two figures are both recorded on the source page under Open questions.
  • On its ruins the Jewish settlement of Kerem Maharal was erected; a few picturesque houses are still left (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.197).
  • Sitta’s register lists Ijzim at S 297: depopulation date 23-07-48 with the note “Little Triangle”, Exodus Causes M, Arab Population 48 of 3,445 on 46,905 dunums, operation st, with a Massacres M mark (The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, PDF p.9).

The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ayn Ghazal, Haifa

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