Welcome To Sa'sa' - سعسع (סעסע)

District of Safad Ethnically cleansed days ago	العربية Google Earth
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Statistic & Fact

Value

Occupation Date

October 30, 1948

Distance From District

12 (km) North East of Safad

Elevation

875 (meters)

Before & After Nakba, Click Map For Details

Pre-Nakba Map showing before and after destruction

Pre-Nakba Aerial View

Map Location

See location #44 on the map

View from satellite

Military Operation

Operation Hiram

Attacking Units

The terror soldiers of Sheva' (Seventh) Brigade and Palestinian Arab Druze unit.

Acts of Terror

On 15th of February 1948, the Palmach Third Battalion killed 15 villagers including 5 children, and the destruction of 15 village houses. Another UNKNOWN MASSACRE occurred in Sa'sa' during occupation on the handed of the terror gangs of Sheva' (Seventh) Brigade. We need details about this unknown massacre if you have any!

Exodus Cause

Expulsion by Zionist troops

Village Temains

The village has been mostly destroyed with the exception of few houses, some are deserted, and some are used by Jewish settlers

Ethnically Cleansing

The village inhabitants were mostly ethnically cleansed to Lebanon, but some were allowed to stay in Jish (Safad).

Terminating Refugee Camps

The refugees are mostly living in Naher al-Barid refugee camp near Tripoli (Lebanon), some are in al-Rashidyah refugee camp near Sour/Tyre (Labanon), and few refugees living in the village of al-Ghaziyah (mostly from al-Sayid clan) near 'Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp.

Clans

The clans of DAR EL-SAYED, DAR HUSSAEN EL-KHALIL , DAR WHEBEH, DAR ALSHEIKH HUSSAEN DAR AL HAJJ, DAR LUBANI, DAR KENAAN, DAR SALEH, DAR EL GHAZAL.

Pre-Nakba
Land Ownership

Ethnic Group	Land Ownership (Dunums)*
Arab	12,822
Jewish	0
Public	1,974
**Total	14,796

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics
**Town Lands' Demarcation Maps

Land Usage
As of 1945

Land Usage	Arab (Dunum)*
Irrigated & Plantation	1,404
Olive Groves	150
Planted W/ Cereal	4,514
Built up	48
Arable	5,918
Non-Arable	8,830

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Population

Year	Population*
1596	457
19th century	300
1922	643
1931	840
1945	1,130
1948	1,311
Est. Refugees 1998	8,050

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Number of Houses

Year	Number of Houses
1931	154
1948	240

Near By Towns

	Lebanon ↑ (N)	Kafr Bir'im ↗
Hurfeich ←	Sa'sa'	→ Jish (Gush Halav)
↙ Ghabbatiyya	↓ Bayt Jann	↘ Jish (Gush Halav)

Schools

The village had two elementary schools, one school was for boys and the other school was for girls.

Places of Warship

One mosque

Shrines / Maqams

Sa'sa contains maqam/shrine for an old sage known by Maqam al-Sheikh Waheib, Maqam Sitty Nafeesa, and Maqam al-Sheikh Sadeeq.

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.

Exculsive Jewish Colonies
Who Usurped Village Lands

Sasa

Village Before Nakba

The village was situated on a rocky hill in the heart of the Upper Galilee Mountains. It was at the intersection of a network of roads that connected it to neighboring villages and urban centers, including Safad. The Arab geographer Abu 'Ubayd Allah al-Bakri (d. 1094) reported that he passed through Sa'sa' when traveling from Dayr al-Qasi to Safad. In 1596, Sa'sa' was a village in the nahiya of Jira (liwa' of Safad) with a population of 457. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, olives, and fruits, as well as on other types of produce and property, such as goats, beehives, and vineyards. In the late nineteenth century, Sa'sa' was described as a village built on a slight hill that was surrounded by vineyards and olive and fig trees, with a population of 300.

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. 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. All of the residents of Sa'sa' were Muslim. There was a small marketplace in the village center with a few shops, as well as a mosque and two elementary schools, one for boys and one for girls. 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. In 1944/45 a total of 4,496 dunums was allotted to cereals; 1,404 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Sa'sa' was built on the site of a Bronze Age (early second millenium 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.

Village Occupation and Ethnic Cleaning

Two massacres were committed at Sa'sa' by Haganah forces in 1948: one in mid-February and another at the end of October. On 15 February, a Palmach force from the Third Battalion raided the village because 'it was used as a base for Arab fighters from the village and from elsewhere,' according to the History of the Haganah. Battalion commander Moshe Kelman had orders to 'blow up twenty houses and kill the largest possible number of fighters.' The attackers stormed the village during the night, placed explosive charges in a number of houses and activated the detonators. The result was that ten houses were wholly 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].' The History of the Haganah refers to the massacre as 'one of the most daring raids in the depth of enemy territory.'

Press reports at the time belie the claim that the village was used as a military base, however. 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.

The second massacre was perpetrated on 30 October, at the time that the village was occupied, during Operation Hiram (see 'Arab al-Samniyya, Acre sub-disctrict). 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. Nevertheless, acts of 'mass murder' (in the words of Israel Galili, former head of the Haganah National Staff) were committed in the village. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, Galili told Mapam party leaders, during a briefing held the week after the occupation, that some villagers were also expelled. Villagers interviewed in later years said that some of them had fled on 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. But detailed accounts of possible killings at Sa'sa' are not available.

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.'

Zionists Colonies on Village Lands

The settlements of Sasa (187270), established in 1949 , and Mattat (183271), founded in 1979, lie on the village site.

Village Today

Some of the old olive trees remain, and a number of walls and houses still stand. Some of the houses are presently used by the settlement; one of them has an arched entrance and arched windows (see photos). A large portion of the surrounding land is forested; the rest is cultivated by Israeli farmers.

Source

Dr. Walid al-Khalidi, 1992: All That Remains.

Want to browse more? 80,000 pictures were grouped in these gallaries:

Display Name	Clan/Hamolah	Country of Residence
Mohammed Abdulrahim Khalil	Hussein Khalil	Sydney, Australia
Ahmad Bader	BADER	UAE, UAE
Hicham Taha	Taha	Siegen, Germany
Fady Azzam	Azzam	-
Wael Abou Houssein	-	Denmark
Moh'd Bader	-	usa
Anwar AlSaleh	ALSALEH	Dubai, UAE
shawki krayyem	-	naher allbared
noora	السيد	uae, uae
Mohammed soubhi el sayyed	El Sayyed	Athens
BADR	BADR	GERMANY
BADR	adib ibrahim badr	germany
Khaled Bader	Bader	Kuwait
bahaa	-	-
Mohamed Hassan Zarife	Zarife	Germany, Germany
AKRAM AHMAD ZEIDAN WEHBEH	Wehbeh	HAWALLY, STATE OF KUWAIT
Bilal El Sayed	-	dubai, UAE
Mutaz Loubani	Loubani	Germany
Wehbeh	-	UAE
mohammad kassem	nehmi	-
Rabih Wehbeh	Rabih	Beirut, Lebanon
Taghrid	Hussein Alkhalil	Ontario, Canada
Mohammed Abdulrahim	Huusein Khalil	-
cippa	-	-
Mohamad Wehbe	-	United Arab Emirates
naser kassem	kassem	danmark
wahed	-	lund
hosam loubani	loubani	damascus, syria
Ahmad Wehbe	Wehbe	cleveland, United Kingdom
Ahmad Al Jumaa	-	Texas, USA
heba alsayed	-	ABU DHABI -UAE
Mahmoud Abdul Rahim	Hussin Al Khalil	North, Lebanon
zaid sasa	sasa	amman, jordan
Mahmoud Loubani	Loubani	Abu Dhabi, Palestine
abdallah	kahlalieh	dubai, uae
Hussein El-Sayed	El-Sayed	UK
moussa ahmed	saasaa	-
Um mohiddin	wehbe,Tripoli	California, Lebanon
abo eljoj	-	germany, germany
Walid Awad	Awad	Dubai, UAE
wasim nasr	-	-
Ahmed Fawzi	Loubani	Doha, Qatar
Samer Loubani	Loubani	Tripoli, Lebanon
Ahmad	Loubani	Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
A Loubani	Loubani	-
Maher Dahoud	Dahoud	U.A.E
Soubh Badr	Badr	-
Ahmad El sayed	EL sayed	UAE
Abu Faten Wehbe	Wehbe	Abu Dhabi - Ottawa
Hietham Bou Shaheen	-	Mount Lebanon, Lebanon
Mahmoud Wehbe	Wehbe	U.A.E - SHARJAH
LOUBANI	-	TRIPOLI, LEBANON
Dwahbeh	-	Abu Dhabi, UAE
Fawzi El-Breidi	El-Breidi	sharjah, UAE
Mohammad Ahmad Abou Hussein	Abou Hussien	-
Jihad Abou Hussien	Abou Hussien	Denmark, Denmark
Ibrahim Abou Hussien	Abou Hussien	Denmark, Denmark
Abdullah Abou Hussein	Abou Hussien	-
Mohammad Al Sayed	Al Sayed	Libanon, Libanon
wissam elhajj	-	-
BADER	-	greece, greece
Fahd	Azzam	Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
moataz Azzam	Azzam	abu dhabi, united arab emirates
jamal abu hassan	abu hassan	danmark, danemark
Ahmad Al Jumaa	-	Texas, USA
Fadi Krayyem	-	-
Rani Rafick Al Sayed	Rani Rafick Al Sayed	UAE, Abu Dhabi . U.A.E
Samar El Sayed	-	Canada
moukhtar	-	lebanon, lebanon
Ali El-Sayed	El-Sayed	Denmark, Denmark
abuhalim	abdallah	lebanon, sasa
Nora	-	-
Louay	Chahade	UAE
aboura	-	U.A.E
Mohamad Soliman	Soliman	Denmark, Denmark
Wissam	Balous	abu dhabi, UAE
Khaled Al-Sayyed	Al-Sayyed	Abu Dhabi, Palestine
maher ahmad wehbe	wehbe	tripoli, lebanon
wehbe wehbe	wehbe	doha, qatar
tareq ne3me	qassem	abu dahbi, UAE
MOHAMMAD BURHAN WEHBE	wehbe	tripoli, lebanon
Farah	Farah	United Arab Emraites, United Arab Emraites
Rafick El-Sayed	El-Sayed	Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Sameh Sayyed	-	lebanon
mOEN WAHBEH	WAHBEH	TRIPOLI, 961
Ahmad Zarife	EL-HAJ	TRIPOLI, LEBANON
Oussama Wehbe	Wehbe	Nord, France
Tareq Wehbe	Wehbe	Abu Dhabi, UAE
jomanah wehbeh	-	naher albared-tripoli, lebanon
Samer Abou-Houssein	-	Aarhus, Denmark
ASHRAF MAJED ABU HUSSEIN	ABU HUSSEIN	ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Hanadi Loubani	Loubani	Canada
loma	-	lebanon, lebanon
nayef Moh'd kanaan	Kanaan	Malmo
Soubh Badr	Badr	Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
issam saleh	-	-
almouktar	-	lebanon, Palestine
ZIAD WEHBE	-	-
Samer Bader	-	Aksai, Kazakhstan
Jenine1988	Wehbeh	-
marwan wehbeh	wehbeh	-
Ziad Diab	Al-Ghazal	Canada
mohammad wehby	-	-
RAMI WEHBE	Wehbe	Beirut, Lebanon
Jihad Diab	Al-Ghazal	Abu Dhabi, UAE
Ahmad Khalil Moh'd A/Rahim	(AbdulRahim) Hussein Khalil	Abu Dhabi, UAE
omar nasser	nasser	tripoly, lebanon
قرارية	-	-
MOHAMMED ALI MOHAMMED MERA'I KANA'AN	KANA'AN	ABU DHABI , U.A.E
Ahmad Loubani	-	Ontario, Canada
Mohamed Abou houssein	Abou Hussein	Danmark, Danmark
NAIF TAHA	EL HAJE	SHARJAH, UAE
husam wehbeh	wehbeh	ankara, turkey
Iyad Wehbe	Wehbe	Sharjah, UAE
Ahmad Abou Hussein	Abou Hussein	Denmark, Denmark
lotfi wehbe	-	Dubai, U.A.E

All Registered Members

الذاكرة مفتاح العودة -- الحلقة 87 -- سعسع Duration: 23 min 22 sec
جولة في قرية سعسع فلسطين Duration: 3 min 29 sec

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