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Sa'sa

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aliasesSa'sa, Sasa

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Summary

Palestinian village in the upper Galilee, attacked on the night of 14–15 February 1948 under the Lamed-Heh operations on Yigal Allon’s order to blow up twenty houses and kill as many villagers as possible, leaving 35 demolished houses and 60–80 dead, in Pappe’s account; a kibbutz now stands on its ruins.

Details

  • The order to attack Sa’sa came from Allon, commander of the Palmach in the north, and was entrusted to Moshe Kalman, deputy commander of the third battalion that had committed the atrocities in Khisas; Allon explained the village had to be attacked because of its location: ‘We have to prove to ourselves that we can take the initiative’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.105-106).

  • The order was: ‘You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many “warriors” [read: “villagers”] as possible’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.106).

  • Attacked at midnight with no resistance, the troops systematically blew up houses while families were still sleeping inside; Kalman recalled leaving behind 35 demolished houses and 60–80 dead bodies, quite a few of them children (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.106).

  • At the 19 February 1948 Consultancy meeting Ben-Gurion liked the Sa’sa operation for the way it had ‘caused the Arabs to flee’, and Allon drew the lesson: ‘If we destroy whole neighbourhoods or many houses in the village, as we did in Sa’sa, we make an impression’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.106-107).

  • Some original Palestinian houses survive inside the kibbutz built on the ruins, its entrance sign Hebraized to ‘Sasa’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.105).

  • In May 1948 attempts to extend control over the remoter Upper Galilee failed, mainly because Lebanese and local volunteers defended Sa’sa, the primary target; the Golani Brigade’s order for its second attack was destruction and mining of the rubble, not permanent occupation, and Sa’sa was spared for a few more months (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.170).

  • In Operation Hiram Sa’sa was seized in the single day at the end of October 1948; after its occupation, Brigade Seven soldiers ran amok, firing randomly at anyone in the houses and on the streets, killing fifteen villagers and leaving a large number wounded, and demolished all the houses apart from a few taken over by members of Kibbutz Sasa, built on the ruins of the village (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.215, p.217).

  • Pappe notes that the chronicle of Sa’sa in 1948 cannot easily be constructed from the archival material; its survivors, mostly in the Naher al-Barid and Rashidiyya refugee camps in Lebanon, preserve their testimonies for posterity (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.217).

  • Chapter 8 (PDF p.217) gives the February 1948 massacre’s toll as fifteen villagers including five children — the figures Chapter 4 gives for Khisas — against Chapter 4’s own Sa’sa figures of 35 demolished houses and 60–80 dead; the conflict is recorded on the source page under Open questions.

  • Pappe concludes the Sa’sa opening of Chapter 8: the story its survivors tell does indicate, as in the case of the survivors of Tantura, that the Israeli troops perpetrated a massacre in the village (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • Jewish settlers colonised Sa’sa in the first week of January 1949 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.251).

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Yigal Allon, Khisas, Consultancy

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