Arabic لزّازة Area 1,586 dunams1.6 km² Local time Tuesday 3:43 AM | Name meaning “fastening”, Palestine grid 207/290 Cause(s) of depopulation Whispering campaign Date of depopulation 21 May 1948 | |
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Weather 11°C, Wind SE at 2 km/h, 88% Humidity | ||
Lazzaza (Arabic: لزّازة, transliterated as Lazzâza) was a Palestinian Arab village of 230 in the northern Hula Valley next to the Hasbani River, located 27.5 kilometers (17.1 mi) northwest of Safad.
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History
In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Lazzaza, while under Ottoman rule, as a village of 70 people built of adobe bricks and situated on a plain near a river.
British Mandate era
It was incorporated into the British Mandate of Palestine in 1922. Under the British, Lazzaza had an elementary school, in which 26 students were enrolled in 1945. The residents, mostly Muslims, took advantage of the village's fertile lands, and agriculture became the basis of its economy. The primarily cultivated crops were onions, corn, and fruits, but the beehives were also kept, in addition to some livestock. Some of Lazzaza's inhabitants also fished in the Hasbani River.
In the 1931 census of Palestine the population of Lazaza was 176, all Muslims, in a total of 39 houses.
In the 1945 population survey by Sami Hadawi, Lazzaza was counted with the nearby Jewish settlement of Beit Hillel which together constituted a population of 330, 100 of whom were Jewish.
Types of land use in dunams in the village in 1945:
The land ownership of the village before occupation in dunams:
1948, aftermath
The Arabs of Lazzaza fled their village during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on May 21, 1948. The village was not attacked by Israeli forces, and the probable cause of its depopulation was a "whispering campaign" devised by Palmach commander Yigal Allon during Operation Yiftach, in which rumor would spread about massive Jewish reinforcements approaching the Galilee. According to Walid Khalidi, "only a few scattered houses remain on the village site", and that the residents of Beit Hillel cultivate the surrounding fields.