Village Files (Tarshiha Only)
Commentary and translation by Prof. Ilan Pappé
From 1940 onwards, in preparation for the 1948 ethnic cleansing, the intelligence service of the Hagana collected detailed information on every village in Palestine. This enabled the leadership to know the wealth of the villages, its internal social and economic problems, the members who were political active and other strategic information that would make it easy to occupy and loot the village in the future.
We are displaying here at this point one out of many we possess and which will be displayed and translated in this website.
The village here is Tarshiha in the north of Palestine.
Here is a partial translation of this document.
Tarshiha
“An ancient village from the Roman times. Built on ruins [this appears almost in every village file and is meant to indicate a distant “Hebrew” past, which would justify displacement and replacement].
Water: there is a water well, 20 meters deep…there a rainwater reservoir, 1.5 kilometre wide at the edge of the village. Every house collects enough rainfall for its needs…
Roads: one asphalt road reaches the village. The village’s streets are well laid and are good [for movement] also in the winter…the villagers have four buses that connect daily between Tarshiha and Acre. There is one taxi and one lorry.
Buildings: Mortar and stone…new once cement and iron…. The fences: palms and thorns.
Valleys (Wadis): on the north wadi al-qarn…on the north west, wadi al-sajnun.
Ruins: In the south Qalat (fortress) Jiddin…Hirbet Qaqur used to a praying site for pagans and it’s told there was a golden statue at its top, people came to bow to if from far away. [it also mentions in passing burial places for saints or holy men].
Animals: 1800 head of cattle, 2000 sheep, 100 camels, 5000 poultry and few beehives.
Lands: 10,00 dunams of cultivated land…main crops: tabacco, olives and fruits.
Effendi Landowners: al-Hadi al-Yasusi has part of the landowners. This Hadi is a religious man who has large family called al-Shadhaliya, concentrated in Acre [this shows a bit of ignorance as this was a member of a Sufi order in Acre).
Irrigation: the Tabaco fields are irrigated with rainfall…
Waqf: few dunams belong to the tomb of Shaykh al-Mujahid.
Number of people: 2700. One thousand men in the ages, 18-45 [the age of men would be important as this was the part of population targeted for execution or imprisonment after the occupation of the village].
Families: [a list of 6 families. A comment of one of them “they have a relative, the “advocate” [lawyer] Jamal al-Hamid in Haifa. An extremist.”
[This file was updated last in 1943. Quite probably it was updated again around 1947.]