Saliha

There were several old structures in the village, including rock-cut tombs, traces of mosaic floors, and oil presses. The nearby Khirbat al-Sanifa contained ancient relics, such as a circular pressing floor. A winepress was excavated in the area in 2001.Frankel, 2005, [http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=119&mag_id=110 Yir’on] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719082203/http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=119&mag_id=110 |date=2011-07-19 }}

In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Saliha as a village of about 200 people who cultivated gardens in the surrounding area and built their homes out of basalt stones mortared with mud. They took their drinking water from several cisterns and a large pond.Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, pp. [https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp01conduoft#page/202/mode/1up 202] -[https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp01conduoft#page/203/mode/1up 203], Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 492

{{Further|Mandatory Palestine}}

File:Saliha police post.jpg in Saliha{{cite news|author=Danny Rubinstein |title=The seven lost villages |url=http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=746274 |date=4 August 2006 |newspaper=Haaretz |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071001002608/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=746274 |archive-date=1 October 2007 }}]]

Its population was predominantly Shia Muslim and it had an elementary school for boys.

In the 1931 census of Palestine the population of Salha was 742 Muslims, in a total of 142 houses.Mills, 1932, p. [https://archive.org/details/CensusOfPalestine1931.PopulationOfVillagesTownsAndAdministrativeAreas 110]

File:Saliha 1945.jpg. Scale 1:250,000]]

By the 1945 statistics the population was counted with Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun, and totaling 1,070 Muslims with 11,735 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 7,401 dunams were allocated to cereals, 422 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. [http://www.palestineremembered.com/download/VillageStatistics/Table%20II/Safad/Page-121.jpg 121] while 58 dunams were built-up (urban) area.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. [http://www.palestineremembered.com/download/VillageStatistics/Table%20III/Safad/Page-171.jpg 171]

{{Further|1948 Palestine war}}

{{Nakba}}

Between 30 October 1948 and 2 November 1948, Saliha was the first of three villages (the others being Safsaf and Jish) in which a massacre was committed by the 7th Brigade of the Israel Defense ForcesMorris, 2004, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA487 487] under the command of General Moshe Carmel.Rogan, 2007, p. 53.

In the case of Saliha, Israeli archival sources say the troops entered the village and blew up a structure, possibly a mosque, killing the 60 to 94 people who had taken refuge inside. These estimates are based on documentary evidence that include a 6 November 1948 diary entry by Yosef Nahmani. When Nahmani's papers was first published by his commander Yosef Weitz in 1965, guided by propagandistic motives, he laundered it to remove details of atrocities such as those which took place in Saliha.Aida Essaid, [https://books.google.com/books?id=yNpJAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA231 Zionism and Land Tenure in Mandate Palestine,] Routledge 2013 p.231. Nahmani refers to "'60 - 70' men and women murdered after 'they had raised a white flag'".Morris, 2004, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA500 500] Also referenced by Morris are handwritten notes taken by Aharon Cohen from the Mapam Political Committee meeting on 1 November 1948 in which Galili, or Moshe Erem is recorded as stating: "94 in Saliha blown up in a house". In accounts recorded from interviews with Saliha families, now resident in Lebanon, Robert Fisk provides a different version. Nimr Aoun (b.1915), one of two survivors of the massacre in the square, says that when the Jewish army arrived, leaflets were handed over to villagers saying they would be spared if they surrendered, which they duly did. The area was surrounded by thirteen tanks (other accounts speak of 10 armoured cars) and, while the villagers stood together, the Israelis opened fire. He survived, though wounded, by hiding under corpses and then crawling off under cover of night, finding a donkey and riding it to Maroun for surgery.Robert Fisk,The Great War for Civilisation:The Conquest of the Middle East, (2005) Harper Perennial 2006 p0.457. In an earlier interview Aoun said the villagers were summoned from a crier to assemble in the village square in front of a mosque. Two Israeli officers sipped coffee as the locals gathered. The crowd was then asked to hand over their weapons, and then the Arabic-speaking officer turned to converse with his troops, after which machine guns on top of the armoured cars opened fire and killed some 70 villagers. The corpses were left to rot for four days, and then Israeli bulldozers came and piled them into the mosque, which was then blown up with explosives. Many villagers hoped to return, waiting nearby in Lebanese villages with relatives, but they ended up settling in the Tyre suburb of Shabriha.Nicholas Blanford, [http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/1998/May-14/25712-zionisms-first-lebanese-victims-remembered.ashx 'Zionism’s first Lebanese victims remembered,'] The Daily Star May 14, 1998.

After the assault was over, the remaining inhabitants of the village were expelled, forming part of the Palestinian exodus of 1948. Nahmani, speaking of the 67 men and women gunned down in the village square, asked himself in his papers: 'Where did they come by such a measure of cruelty, like Nazis? . . Is there no more humane way of expelling the inhabitants than by such methods?'.

Yoav Gelber lists Saliha alongside Deir Yassin, Abu Shusha, Safsaf (Sufsuf), and Lydda as forming part of the "Palestinian pantheon of massacres ... villages where Palestinians claimed that atrocities had taken place".Gelber, 2006, p. 324.

Salman Abu-Sitta, author of the Atlas of Palestine,{{Cite web|title=Bibliography and References|publisher=Palestine Remembered|date=25 June 2007|access-date=2007-12-20|url=http://www.palestineremembered.com/Bibliography.html}} estimated that the number of Palestinian refugees from Saliha in 1998 was 7,622 people.{{Cite web|title=Welcome to Saliha|publisher=Palestine Remembered|access-date=2007-12-20|url=http://www.palestineremembered.com/Safad/Saliha/}}

File:Yiron.jpg. Saliha 20 May 1949]]

The Israeli Jewish localities of Yir'on and Avivim are located on the former lands of Saliha.

Of what remains of Saliha's built structures today, Walid Khalidi writes that, "The only remaining landmark is a long building (which may have been a school) with many high windows. The site is a flat, mostly cultivated area. The bulk of the surrounding land is planted by Israeli farmers with apple trees."

• Shia villages in Palestine
• Depopulated Palestinian locations in Israel
• Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine War

{{Reflist|25em}}

{{Refbegin}}

• Agreement between His Majesty's Government and the French Government respecting the Boundary Line between Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean to El Hámmé, Treaty Series No. 13 (1923), Cmd. 1910.
• Biger, Gideon (1989), Geographical and other arguments in delimitation in the boundaries of British Palestine, in "International Boundaries and Boundary Conflict Resolution", IBRU Conference, {{ISBN|1-85560-000-5}}, 41–61.
• Biger, Gideon (1995), The encyclopedia of international boundaries, New York : Facts on File.
• Biger, Gideon (2005), The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840-1947. London: Routledge. {{ISBN|0-7146-5654-2}}.
• {{cite book|last1=Conder|first1=C.R.|author-link1=Claude Reignier Conder|last2=Kitchener|first2=H.H.|author-link2=Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener|year=1881|url=https://archive.org/details/surveyofwesternp01conduoft|title=The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology|location=London|publisher=Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund|volume=1}}
• {{cite book|title=Village Statistics, April, 1945 |url=http://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/Hebrew/library/Pages/BookReader.aspx?pid=856390|author=Department of Statistics|year=1945|publisher=Government of Palestine}}
• Franco-British Convention on Certain Points Connected with the Mandates for Syria and the Lebanon, Palestine and Mesopotamia, signed Dec. 23, 1920. Text available in American Journal of International Law, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1922, 122–126.
• {{cite journal|last=Frankel|first=Rafael|date=2005-03-21|url=http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=119&mag_id=110|title=Yir'on l Report|publisher=Hadashot Arkheologiyot – Excavations and Surveys in Israel|number=117|access-date=2009-04-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719082203/http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=119&mag_id=110|archive-date=2011-07-19|url-status=dead}}
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• {{cite journal|title=Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine|url=http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3150.html|first=S.|last=Hadawi|author-link=Sami Hadawi|year=1970|publisher=Palestine Liberation Organization Research Centre|access-date=2009-07-25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181208215837/http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3150.html|archive-date=2018-12-08|url-status=dead}}
• {{cite book|title=All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_By7AAAAIAAJ |first=W.|last=Khalidi|author-link=Walid Khalidi|year=1992|location=Washington D.C.|publisher=Institute for Palestine Studies|isbn=0-88728-224-5}}
• {{cite book |editor-last= Mills |editor-first=E |title=Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas |url= https://archive.org/details/CensusOfPalestine1931.PopulationOfVillagesTownsAndAdministrativeAreas |publisher=Government of Palestine |location=Jerusalem |year=1932}}
• McTague, John (1982), Anglo-French Negotiations over the Boundaries of Palestine, 1919–1920, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, 101–112.
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• {{cite book|title=The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948|first=E.|last=Rogan |author-link=Eugene Rogan|year=2007|location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-87598-1}}
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• US Department of State, International Boundary Study series: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080407043403/http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS098.pdf Iraq-Jordan], [https://web.archive.org/web/20080407043402/http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS100.pdf Iraq-Syria], [https://web.archive.org/web/20090327062139/http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS094.pdf Jordan-Syria], [https://web.archive.org/web/20060916035757/http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS075.pdf Israel-Lebanon].

{{Refend}}

• [http://www.palestineremembered.com/Safad/Saliha/index.html Welcome to Saliha]
• [https://www.zochrot.org/en/village/49354 Saliha], Zochrot
• Survey of Western Palestine, map 4: [http://www.iaa-archives.org.il/zoom/zoom.aspx?folder_id=93&type_id=6&id=8367 IAA], [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Survey_of_Western_Palestine_1880.04.jpg Wikimedia commons]
• [http://www.alnakba.org/villages/safad/saliha.htm Saliha], from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
• [http://www.villagesofpalestine.com/Saliha.htm Saliha], Dr. Khalil Rizk.

{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War}}

Category:Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War

Category:Massacres in Israel during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Category:District of Safad

Category:Zionist political violence