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| Samakh raid | |||||||
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| Part of the Franco-Syrian War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Kayed al-Ubaydat † [1] | |||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 2,000 | |||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| "Number of casualties" [1] | |||||||
The Samakh raid was fought in April 1920 between Arab Bedouin irregulars under the banner of the Arab Kingdom of Syria and the British Army in Eastern Galilee. The event is perceived by scholars as part of the spillover of the Franco-Syrian War.
The Franco-Syrian War took place in early 1920 between Syrian Arab nationalists, under the Hashemite King, and France. Gangs ('isabat) of clan-based border peasants, combining politics and banditry, were active in the area of the loosely defined border between the soon to be established Mandatory Palestine, French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria. [2]
At the beginning of the Franco-Syrian War, the Upper Galilee was populated by several semi-nomadic Bedouin Arab tribes, the largest residing in Halasa, and four tiny Jewish settlements, including Metula, Kfar Giladi, Tel Hai and Hamra. While the Arab villages and Bedouin allied with the Arab Kingdom of Syria, the Jewish residents chose to remain neutral during the Arab conflict with the French.
Just prior to the French occupation of Damascus, the instability in Transjordan threatened to spill over into Palestine. [1] The sedentary clans of Bani Kananah, perhaps encouraged by members of the Istiqlal native to the Hawran, including such radical nationalists as Ahmad Muraywid and Ali Khulqi raided Jewish settlements in Galilee. [1] Early in the war, a Kfar Giladi resident was killed by armed Bedouin, greatly increasing tension in the region. Jewish villages were regularly pillaged by the pro-Syrian Bedouin on the pretext of searching for French spies and soldiers.
In April 1920, the Arab militants engaged British Army at Samakh and suffered a number of casualties as RAF planes strafed them on their way back across the Jordan river. [1] The event took place as some 2,000 armed Bedouins mostly from Transjordan attempted to attack the Samakh train station aiming to prevent the arrival of British reinforcements from Haifa. [3]
The Samakh raid seemed to confirm Allenby's fears that abandonment of OETA East would leave Palestine's right flank "in the air, threatened by all the Druze and bedouin tribes." [1] Herbert Samuel, the high commissioner in Jerusalem, called for the occupation of Transjordan west of the Hijaz Railway. [1]
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.
Hittin was a Palestinian village located 8 kilometers (5 mi) west of Tiberias before it was occupied by Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war when most of its original residents became refugees. As the site of the Battle of Hattin in 1187, in which Saladin reconquered most of Palestine from the Crusaders, it has become an Arab nationalist symbol. The shrine of Nabi Shu'ayb, venerated by the Druze and Sunni Muslims as the tomb of Jethro, is on the village land. The village was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century until the end of World War I, when Palestine became part of the British Mandate for Palestine. On July 17 1948, the village was occupied by Israel during the nakbaa, after its residents fled out of their homes because of Nazareth's occupation. in later years, the Moshavs Arbel and Kfar Zeitim were erected where Hittin used to be.
The Arab Legion was the police force, then regular army, of the Emirate of Transjordan, a British protectorate, in the early part of the 20th century, and then of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, an independent state, with a final Arabization of its command taking place in 1956, when British senior officers were replaced by Jordanian ones.
Joseph Vladimirovich (Volfovich) Trumpeldor was an early Zionist activist who helped organize the Zion Mule Corps and bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Trumpeldor was killed while defending the settlement of Tel Hai in 1920 and subsequently became a Jewish national hero. According to a standard account, his last words were "It's nothing, it is good to die for our country".
Tel Hai is a name of the former Jewish settlement in northern Galilee, the site of an early battle between Jews and Arabs heralding the growing civil conflict, and of a monument, tourist attraction, and a college. It is currently part of kibbutz Kfar Giladi.
Hashomer was a Jewish defense organization in Palestine founded in April 1909. It was an outgrowth of the Bar-Giora group and was disbanded after the founding of the Haganah in 1920. Hashomer was responsible for guarding Jewish settlements in the Yishuv, freeing Jewish communities from dependence upon foreign consulates and Arab watchmen for their security. It was headed by a committee of three: Israel Shochat, Israel Giladi and Mendel Portugali.
Samakh was a Palestinian Arab village at the south end of Lake Tiberias in Ottoman Galilee and later Mandatory Palestine. It was the site of battle in 1918 during World War I.
Kfar Giladi is a kibbutz in the Galilee Panhandle of northern Israel. Located south of Metula on the Naftali Mountains above the Hula Valley and along the Lebanese border, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 702.
Hunin was a Palestinian Arab village in the Galilee Panhandle part of Mandatory Palestine, close to the Lebanese border. It was the second largest village in the district of Safed, but was depopulated in 1948. The inhabitants of this village were, similar to the inhabitants of Southern Lebanon, Shia Muslims.
Al-Khalisa was a Palestinian Arab village situated on a low hill on the northwestern edge of the Hula Valley of over 1,800 located 28 kilometers (17 mi) north of Safad. It was depopulated in the 1948 Palestine war.
The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
The Jordan Valley forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. Unlike most other river valleys, the term "Jordan Valley" often applies just to the lower course of the Jordan River, from the spot where it exits the Sea of Galilee in the north, to the end of its course where it flows into the Dead Sea in the south. In a wider sense, the term may also cover the Dead Sea basin and the Arabah valley, which is the rift valley segment beyond the Dead Sea and ending at Aqaba/Eilat, 155 km (96 mi) farther south.
Misgav Am is a kibbutz in the Upper Galilee in northern Israel. Located close to the border with Lebanon, facing the Lebanese town of Odaisseh, and near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 360.
The modern borders of Israel exist as the result both of past wars and of diplomatic agreements between the State of Israel and its neighbours, as well as an effect of the agreements among colonial powers ruling in the region before Israel's creation. Only two of Israel's five total potential land borders are internationally recognized and uncontested, while the other three remain disputed; the majority of its border disputes are rooted in territorial changes that came about as a result of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, which saw Israel occupy large swathes of territory from its rivals. Israel's two formally recognized and confirmed borders exist with Egypt and Jordan since the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty and the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, while its borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories remain internationally defined as contested.
Israel Shochat was a founder of and a key figure in Bar-Giora and Hashomer, two of the precursors of the Israel Defense Forces.
The Battles of the Kinarot Valley, is a collective name for a series of military engagements between the Haganah and the Syrian army during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, fought between 15–22 May 1948 in the Kinarot Valley. It includes two main sites: the Battle of Degania–Samakh (Tzemah), and battles near Masada–Sha'ar HaGolan. The engagements were part of the battles of the Jordan Valley, which also saw fighting against Transjordan in the area of Gesher.
Aqil Agha al-Hasi was the strongman of northern Palestine in the mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule. He was originally a commander of Arab irregular soldiers, known as the Hawwara tribe, in the service of the Ottoman governors of Acre. His influence in the Galilee grew as he strengthened his alliances with the powerful Beni Sakhr and Anizzah tribes of Transjordan, and recruited unemployed Bedouin irregulars from Egypt into his own band of irregulars, who thenceforth became known as the Hanadi tribe. He was known by his men and Western travelers to be courageous, cunning and charismatic, all qualities that contributed to his rise as the de facto ruler of the Galilee.
The Battle of Tel Hai was fought on 1 March 1920 between Arab and Jewish forces at the village of Tel Hai in Northern Galilee. In the course of the event, a Shiite Arab militia, accompanied by Bedouin from a nearby village, attacked the Jewish agricultural locality of Tel Hai. In the aftermath of the battle eight Jews and five Arabs were killed. Joseph Trumpeldor, the commander of Jewish defenders of Tel Hai, was shot in the hand and stomach, and died while being evacuated to Kfar Giladi that evening. Tel Hai was eventually abandoned by the Jews and burned by the Arab militia.
The Muslim migrations to Ottoman Palestine involved successive waves of settlement by Muslims of various ethnicities within the southern Syrian districts of the Ottoman Empire. This area, which encompasses modern-day Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza, was divided into different prefectures, such as the sanjaks of Nablus, Acre, and Lajjun and the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem.