This article is about the former village in Haifa Sub-district. For the former village in Ramle Sub-district, see
Abu Shusha. For the former village in Tiberias Sub-district, see
Ghuwayr Abu Shusha.
In 1870
Victor Guérin described it as a small village. The slopes of the hill were covered with many piles of overturned materials from buildings, and on the highest point was the remains of an old tower.[9]
In 1926 a small group of Jews from the
Hashomer Hatzair movement settled in a
caravanserai located on Tell Abu Shusha, before they moved to a location a few hundred yards south[13] and established
Mishmar HaEmek.[14]
In the
1945 statistics Abu Shusha had a population of 720, all Muslims,[15] with a total of 8,960 dunams of land.[16] Of this, 931 dunums were plantations or irrigable land, 4,939 were for
cereals,[17] while 3,090 dunams were classified as uncultivable land.[18]
In 1946, members of the
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine visited Abu Shusha as part of educational tour, aimed at examining the political, economic and social conditions in
Mandatory Palestine before crafting a solution to the problem of
Jewish immigration and settlement. After visiting the nearby Jewish kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek, the British delegate,
Richard Crossman wrote: “I’ve never met a nicer community anywhere.” By contrast, two hundred yards down the road, he later wrote: “Abu Shusha, the stenchiest Arab village I have ever seen,” where Crossman was treated to tea “on the [earthen] floor of a filthy hovel.”[20]
1948, aftermath
Few months into the
1947–1949 Palestine war, on 5 April 1948, the
Arab Liberation Army (ALA) reached the area and used Abu Shusha among other villages as a base of operations to raid Mishmar HaEmek.[21][22] The
Haganah General Staff (HGS) instructed the
Golani Brigade: "You must tell the following villages ... that we cannot assure their safety and security, and that they must evacuate forthwith." Among the four villages were Abu Shusha,
Daliyat al-Rawha' and
Al-Rihaniyya.[21][23] According to
Ben-Gurion, a delegation of
Mishmar HaEmek leaders came to him on the 8th or 9 April, and told him that "it was imperative to expel the Arabs [in the area] and to burn the villages."[21][24]
By the 11 April, the village was empty, and 1 Battalion in the
Palmach blew up 30 houses in
Al-Kafrayn and Abu Shusha in order to block the return of the villagers.[25][26] Following the 1948 war, the area was incorporated into the
State of Israel.
In 1992,
Walid Khalidi described the area: "The only remaining sign of the village is the debris of houses, overgrown with cactuses. The grain mill is gone. On the hilly lands around the site, olive trees grow in a fenced-in area that serves as a pasture. The adjacent lands in Marj ibn Amir are planted in various crops, especially cotton."[27]
Two village histories have been written about Abu Shusha and the Arab Turkoman; one in 1987 by Alya Khatib,[28] and one in 1999 by Faisal al-Shuqayrat.[29]
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p.
13
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p.
47Archived 2016-03-03 at the
Wayback Machine
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p.
89
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p.
139
Flapan, S. "The Palestinian Exodus of 1948" in 16, no. 4 (Sum. 87): 3–26. Simha Flapan records
HaShomer HaTzair member Eliezer Bauer, who was also a member of the
Mapam Arab Department reporting during a discussion that the villagers of
Abu Zrik and Abu Shusha were arrested or driven out and the villages were then destroyed.