What is the Sasa massacre in Palestine ?
Before going into the details of the massacre carried out at Sa'sa', let’s talk about the village, and its history.
Sa'sa' was a Palestinian village, located 12 kilometres northwest of Safed, that was depopulated by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before 1948, It was at the intersection of a network of roads that connected it to neighboring villages and urban centers, including Safad. The village was situated on a rocky hill in the heart of the Upper Galilee Mountains. It was dotted with water springs, apple and olive trees, as well as grape vines. The village suffered two massacres committed by Haganah forces: one in mid-February 1948 and the other at the end of October the same year.
Sa'sa' was built on the site of a Bronze Age (early second millennium B.C.) settlement whose remains (walls, tombs, cisterns, and olive and wine presses), have been unearthed. One village building, which although damaged and deserted remained standing until the 1960s (when many of the village structures were toppled by bulldozer teams), may have been built in the eighteenth century. The foundations of this house were dated to the fourth century A.D. by archaeologists. Another excavated in 2003 yielded ceramics dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE.
The Arab geographer Abū 'Ubayd 'Abd Allāh al-Bakrī (d.1094) reported that one passed through Sa'sa' when travelling from Dayr al-Qasi to Safad.
In 1516 Sa'sa', with the rest of Palestine, came under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Shortly afterwards Sa'sa' was made a checkpoint where travellers were charged a toll and tariffs were collected on various goods. The first records of these levies are from 1525/6.
In 1596 Sa'sa' was classified as a village in the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jira, part of liwa' ("district") of Safad, with a population of 457. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives and fruits, as well as on goats, beehives, and vineyards. According to these tax records all the villagers were Muslim. In the eighteenth century Sa'sa' is mentioned as one of the fortified villages of Galilee controlled by Zahir al-Umar's son, Ali. After the defeat of Zahir al-Umar in 1775, Ali continued to resist the Ottoman authorities and defeated an army sent against him at Sa'sa'.
Excavations in 1972 on the west side of the hill revealed the remains of a large rectangular structure (15m x 41m) with 2m thick walls made out of rubble stone with ashlar facing. At the south-west corner of the building there was a solid semi-circular tower (diameter 7m). The main part of the structure is a rectangular hall divided into two rows of five bays. There was a central row of four piers and two half-piers which would probably have supported a cross-vaulted roof. In a later phase an outer skin (2m wide) was added, making the wall a total of 4m thick. At the same time the round tower was converted into a square plan. According to the excavators, the place was occupied for a "fairly long" period, and suggest that it was probably part of the fortress built by Ali, (son of Zahir al-Umar) in the eighteenth century. The design of the building is compatible with other fortresses of the period, like Qalat Jiddin and Dayr Hanna.
In 1875, Victor Guérin found it to be a Muslim village with about 350 inhabitants.
In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Sa'sa' as a village with a population of 300, built on a slight hill that was surrounded by vineyards and olive and fig trees.
A population list from about 1887 showed Sa'sa' to have about 1,740 inhabitants, all Muslim.
Pottery vessels from the Rashaya al-Fukhar workshops, dating to the late Ottoman and early Mandate eras have been found here.
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sa'sa had a population of 634; all Muslim, increasing in the 1931 census to 840, still all Muslims, in a total of 154 houses.
The village houses, made of mud and stone, were attached to one another to form rows that were separated by narrow, meandering alleys. A number of springs guaranteed a plentiful water supply. The village contained AYN AL BEDEIH, SHEIKH WAHEIB, OUM ALASSAFEER, OUN AL RAKHAM, AL BERKHEIH, AL MAHFARA and 10's of underground wells all around in the village houses and in the fields around. The village had a small market-place in the village center with a few shops, as well as a mosque and two elementary schools, one for girls and one for boys. Sa'sa also contained maqams/shrines for an old sage known by Maqam al-Sheikh Waheib, Maqam Sitty Nafeesa, and Maqam al-Sheikh Sadeeq. The villagers cut down the wild trees which initially surrounded the village and replaced them with domesticated species, including apple and olive trees and grape vines.
Because of its proximity to a road network and Lebanon, the British in the late 1930s established watchtowers and barbed wire fences in Sa'sa'. Their goal was to control the activities of Palestinian guerrillas and make it difficult for them to obtain support from across the border.
In the 1944/45 statistics the village had a population of 1,130 Muslims, not a single Jew, and a total land area of 14,796 dunams. Of this, 4,496 dunums were used for cereals; 1,404 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, while 48 dunams were built-up (urban) area.
The Massacres:
Two massacres were committed at Sa'sa' by Haganah forces in 1948: one in mid-February and another at the end of October.
In February 1948, Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmach in the north, ordered an attack on Sa'sa'. The order was given to Moshe Kelman, the deputy commander of Third Battalion. The order read:
"You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many warriors as possible".
According to Pappé, the quote says which said "warriors" should be read "villagers" to properly understand the order. Khalidi, referencing "The History of the Haganah" by Ben-Zion Dinur, say they referred to the massacre as:
"One of the most daring raids into enemy territory."
On February 15, 1948, a Palmach unit entered the village during the night and, without resistance, planted explosives against some of the houses. It was reported at the time that ten or more houses were totally or partially destroyed and ‘tens’ of people were killed, according to the Haganah's estimate. The commander of the operation summarized it by saying that 'it planted a great fear in the hearts of the population of the villages [in the area].' According to the New York Times, a large party of armed men entered the village and, 'without opposition,' planted charges against the houses. The report states that 11 villagers were killed (5 of them small children) and 3 wounded, that 3 houses were completely demolished, and that 11 others were badly damaged. The Times regarded the attack as evidence that Zionist forces had taken the offensive in northern Galilee. The same raiders also attacked the village of Taytaba at around the same time, according to the Associated Press. According to the official history of the Haganah, the village had been used as a base for Arab fighters. However, press reports at the time cited by Khalidi belie this, since the Palmach units met "without opposition"in the village.
According to Benvenisti (who gives the date of the attack as 14 February), the Palmach units that raided Sa'sa' killed 60 people and demolished 16 houses.
According to Israeli historian Ilan pappe, fifteen villagers, including five children were murdered. After it had been occupied, the soldiers of Brigade Seven ran amok, firing randomly at anyone in the houses and on the streets. Besides the fifteen villagers killed, they left behind them a large number of wounded. The troops then demolished all the houses, apart from a few that the members of the settlement Sasa, built on the ruins of the village, took over for themselves after the forced eviction of their original owners.
The order to attack Sa'sa came from Yigal Allon, the commander of the Palmach in the north, and was entrusted to Moshe Kalman, the deputy commander ofthe third battalion that had committed the atrocities in Khisas. Allon explained that the village had to be attacked because of its location. 'We have to prove to ourselves that we can take the initiative,' he wrote to Kalman. Sa'sa was attacked at midnight- all the villages attacked under the 'Lamed-Heh' order were assaulted around midnight, recalled Moshe Kalman.
During the first massacre, Kalmann recounted:
We ran into an Arab guard, He was so surprised that he did not ask "min hada?", "who is it?", but "eish hada?", "what is it?" One of our troops who knew Arabic responded humorously [sic] "hada esh" ("this is [in Arabic] fire [in Hebrew]") and shot a volley into him.'
Kalman's troops took the main street of the village and systematically blew up one house after another while families were still sleeping inside. 'In the end the sky prised open,' recalled Kalman poetically, as a third of the village was blasted into the air. 'We left behind 35 demolished houses and 60-80 dead bodies'(quite a few of them were children). He commended the British army for helpingthe troops to transfer the two wounded soldiers- hurt by debris flying through the air to the Safad hospital.
The Long Seminar participants were called in for another meeting on 19 February 1948, four days after the attack on Sa'sa. It was a Thursday morning, they met once again in Ben-Gurion's home, and the Zionist leader recorded the discussion almost verbatim in his diary. The purpose was to examine the impact of the Lamed Heh operations on the Palestinians.
Josh Palmon brought the 'Orientalist' point of view: the Palestinians still showed no inclination to fight. He was supported by Ezra Danin who reported: 'The villagers show no wish to fight.' Moreover, the ALA was clearly confining its activities to the areas the UN resolution had allocated to a future Palestinian state. Ben-Gurion was unimpressed. His thoughts were already some where else.He was unhappy with the limited scope of the operations: 'A small reaction [to Arab hostility] does not impress anyone. A destroyed house- nothing. Destroy a neighborhood, and you begin to make an impression!' He liked the Sa'sa operation for the way it had 'caused the Arabs to flee'.
Danin thought the operation had sent shock waves through the nearby villages, which would serve to dissuade other villagers from taking part in the fighting. The conclusion was therefore to retaliate with force for every single Arab act, and not pay too much attention to whether particular villages or Arabs were neutral. This feedback process between response and further planning would continue until March 1948. After that, ethnic cleansing stopped being part of retaliation, but wascodifed into a well defined plan that aimed to uproot the Palestinians en masse from their homeland.
Allon continued to expand on the lessons learned from the Lamed-Heh operations in the Consultancy's mid-February meeting:
'If we destroy whole neighbourhoods or many houses in the village, as we did in Sa'sa, we make an impression.'
In conclusion, based on the reports and testimonies given of the first massacre in Sa'sa, the number of those killed are between 11–80 (5 among them were children), and between 14–35 houses were demolished.
It was not until October 30, 1948, as part of Operation Hiram, that the forces of the Haganah occupied Sa'sa'. There a second massacre was commited and “mass murder” took place, according to Israel Galili, the former head of the Haganah National Staff. The Haganah description of the operation states that Sa'sa' was taken with ease by the Sheva' (Seventh) Brigade and that the unit involved met with no resistance. The exact numbers of those killed are unclear, nor are there detailed accounts of the killings, according to All That Remains. Northern Command OC Moshe Carmel later reported that he had seen evidence of killings, and an official investigation by Major Emanuel Yalan suggested that some villagers, including some with disabilities, may have been killed after the village was occupied. However, the relevant files remain closed to historians, and Israel refuses to disclose them. Those villagers who had not already fled were expelled. Villagers interviewed in later years said that some of them had fledon the morning before its occupation after seeing an Israeli plane circling and bombing Safsaf and Jish and hearing the sound of gunfire all night. Yet others apparently fled on hearing of the atrocities committed at Safsaf, according to eyewitnesses interviewed by Palestinian historian Nafez Nazzal.The village was eventually depopulated. The village inhabitants who were mostly ethnically cleansed ended up in Lebanon. Most of the refugees now live in Naher al-Barid, a refugee camp near Tripoli, Lebanon; some are in Rashidiyya camp near Tyre, and others, mostly from a single clan, live in Ghazzawiyya. A smaller community also resides in the Ayn Hilwa refugee camp in southern Lebanon, while a few of the survivors now live in the village of Jish, in the Galilee. They find it difficult to revisit the horrible events surrounding the massacre, yet the story they tell does indicate, as in the case of the survivors of Tantura, that the Israeli troops perpetrated a massacre in the village.
A glimpse of the villagers' suffering may be caught from an account provided by the Israeli commander of the northern front, Moshe Carmel, who related an incident he witnessed near Sa'sa' shortly after its occupation. 'I saw suddenly,' he wrote, 'by the roadside a tall man, bent over, scraping with his fingernails in the hard, rocky soil. I stopped. I saw a small hollow in the ground, dug out by hand, with fingernails, under an olive tree. The man laid down the body of a baby who had died in the arms of his mother, and covered it with soil and small stones.'
Currently, there are few remains of the Palestinian village of Sa'sa', with the exception of the village mosque, which has now been converted into the kibbutz cultural center. The village has been mostly destroyed with the exception of few houses, some are deserted, and some are used by Jewish settlers.
In 1949, an Israeli settlement by the same name ‘’Sasa’’ was established on the village site. Another settlement called Mattat, founded in 1979, also lies on the village site.
In 1992, the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the remains of the village:
"Some of the old olive trees remain, and a number of walls and houses still stand. Some of the houses are presently used by kibbutz Sasa; one of them has an arched entrance and arched windows. A large portion of the surrounding land is forested, the rest is cultivated by Israeli farmers."