Suhmata

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Suhmata
Arabic	سحماتا
Also Spelled	Samueth
District	Acre
Population	1,130 (1945)
Jurisdiction	17,056 dunams
Date of depopulation	30 October 1948
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Jewish forces
Current localities	Tzuri'el, Chosen

Suhmata (Arabic: سحماتا‎) was a Palestinian village, located 25 kilometres northeast of Acre. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

1 Overview
2 See also
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Overview

Suhmata was the site of the ruins of a Byzantine era church.^[1] The Crusaders referred to Suhmata by the name of the castle they built there, Samueth.^[1] The castle was rebuilt by Dhaher el-Omar in the latter half of the eighteenth century.^[1]

In the Ottoman era, an elementary school for boys was founded in the village (1886), and during the British Mandate in Palestine, an agricultural school was established.^[1] These schools, a mosque, a church, two rain-fed irrigation pools, and some 288 houses made up the built-up protion of the village just prior to the outbreak of the 1948 war.^[1]

During Operation Hiram, on 30 October 1948, the First Battalion of Israel's Golani Brigade assaulted the village, resulting in the exodus of its villagers.^[1] The refugees and descendants of refugees from Suhmata are estimated to number some 8,050 people today.^[1]

The village is the focus of the 1996 play Sahmatah by Hanna Eady and Ed Mast.[1]