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Saffuriyya

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aliases

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Summary

Village near Nazareth, one of the first villages bombarded from the air, all of whose inhabitants were evicted in June 1948, in Pappe’s account; its people fled to Nazareth and watched their village become the Israeli moshav Zippori.

Details

  • Saffuriyya was on the Israeli target list of 29 June 1948 and was taken within ten days; all its inhabitants were evicted, soldiers shooting over their heads to hasten their departure (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.183-184).

  • It was one of the first villages Israeli forces bombarded from the air, a rarity in June 1948; terrified women took their children to shelter in the ancient caves nearby, and the ground attack struck the caves as well as the village (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.185).

  • Abu Salim, twenty-seven at the time, stayed to fight although the Arab Liberation Army officer advised running away; his mother was killed trying to enter the Church of Annunciation. Villagers who returned at night to smuggle out their clothes were caught and shot on the spot. In 2001, at eighty, he was still willing to buy his old house back, but had lost all contact with his brother and his brother’s children in the diaspora (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.185).

  • Its people fled to Nazareth and built homes in the Safafra neighbourhood facing their old village, watching Jewish settlers empty their houses and turn the village into an Israeli moshav called Zippori, which Israeli archaeologists quickly claimed was the name of the original Talmudic city (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.185-186).

  • The poet Taha Muhammad Ali was born in Saffuriyya; a fragment of his 1988 poem by a refugee from Saffuriyya is one of the Preface’s epigraphs, and at seventeen he witnessed the 20 June 1948 attack on nearby Mi’ar (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.14, p.183).

  • Sitta’s register lists Saffuriyya at S 432: depopulation date 15-07-48, Exodus Causes M, operation dk, defenders ALA, Arab Population 48 of 5,023 on 55,378 dunums (The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, PDF p.15). Pappe describes Saffuriyya as bombarded and evicted in June 1948; the register’s date is in mid-July, and both are kept as printed.

  • In Manna, Saffuriyya was a large village known for its fighters; volunteer units of its and neighbouring villages’ residents did not surrender easily, but Israeli superiority in numbers and equipment and heavy bombing made it impossible to stand, so the survivors withdrew and the villagers ran towards nearby Nazareth seeking refuge; the village fell quickly in July 1948 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.71).

  • It was one of four Nazareth-district villages destroyed and depopulated — Ma’lul, al-Mujaydil, Saffuriyya and ‘Illut — of which the first three remained deserted and ‘Illut alone was allowed to return (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.73).

The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Nazareth, Operation Palm Tree

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