al-Tira

The Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL) carried out a bombing raid on al-Tira on 12 December 1947, during the very first round of fighting. The bombing was carried out on the Jewish holiday of Chanukka, in conjunction with six other IZL terrorist attacks in various parts of the country. The raid left 13 villagers dead in al-Tira, according to the History of the Haganah . The Palestinian newspaper Filastin listed children and elderly people among the casualties. The account said that the raiding party, consisting of around 20 men, had approached a secluded house at the edge of the village and firebombed it. The attackers also shot at houses and fled through olive groves to an awaiting truck. Confirming the attack, the New York Times reported that in addition to the 13 dead, 10 people were wounded, one house was destroyed, and others were damaged.

The village was exposed to smaller assaults in the coming weeks. An attack on 5 February lasted for half an hour and left no casualties, according to a British communiqué, which added that there was no response from the village. A major attack on al-Tira was made in the early morning of 22 April, in conjunction with the Haganah's offensive against Haifa. That attack was ostensibly aimed at preventing Arab reinforcements from reaching Haifa. But the first attempt to capture the village came shortly after the fall of Haifa, a few days later. Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that it was attacked at 1:40 a.m. on 25 April with mortars and machine guns; a British unit soon appeared on the scene and the firing stopped. The British helped to evacuate some of the women and children to safety, Morris claims. He adds that the Haganah attack resumed early the next morning after the British had left, and continued until another British unit arrived later in the day and arranged for a further evacuation. The New York Times reported that the village had been 'severely mortared,' and it quoted the Haganah as claiming that al-Tira was a 'principal Arab base.' On 5 May, a third effort was made to lead more of the inhabitants to safety and some 600 were taken to Jenin and Nablus, according to Morris.

The attacks continued for around a week. On 13 May, an unsuccessful Haganah strike was made by the Haganah's Alexandroni Brigade. The History of the Haganah writes that the attempt failed because of the lack of 'detailed information about the enemy's system of defense in the village.' This failure resulted in calling off the plan to occupy Qalqilya, as set out in Plan Dalet.

The village finally fell on 16 July, during the Ten Days of battles between the two truces of the war, according to the History of the Haganah. That account notes that the occupation of al-Tira (and other villages in Haifa sub-disctrict, such as Kafr Lam and al-Sarafand) was significant in that it was the first time that naval firepower had been called in to aid land forces. The attack by sea on al-Tira was part of a wider naval operation that captured Kafr Lam and al-Sarafand at the same time. The warship Eilat bombarded the village before land units moved in. Most of the remaining villagers, who had held out under siege for over two months, were expelled to the Jenin-Nablus-Tulkarm Triangle or incarcerated in POW camps, according Morris.

Some of al-Tira's villagers apparently sought refuge in neighboring Ayn Ghazal, for the Secretary General of the Arab League reported that 28 refugees from al-Tira were burned alive there in late July. But a United Nations observer visited the area on 28 July and found 'no evidence to support claims of a massacre,' according to UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. Morris cites an Israeli claim that the charred bodies at Ayn Ghazal were corpses which were found there in an advanced state of decomposition and burned by Israeli troops. He adds that there was no indication of where the bodies had come from or how the victims had died.