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The
village of Hitteen, 8 kilometers east of Tibries, was located before
1948 at the end of a small valley on the northern slope of Hitteen’s
Mountain.
The village still
occupies a commercial and strategic prominence because it is
overlooking
the Plain of Hitteen,
which leads to the coastal depressions surrounding the Lake of
Tabariyya (Tibries). It
is linked westward with the plains of Lower Galilee. Commercial
caravans and military
invasions throughout historical ages used these plains and its
eastern-western
passages.
In 1596, Hitteen was a
village of 605 Palestinian residents, and was described in the
nineteenth century by
the Swiss traveler Burckhardt as a village of 400 people; its houses
built of stones and
encircled by trees of fruit and olives.
Modern Hitteen used to
comprise a small market; a school built in 1897 during the Ottoman
rule and a mosque for
its predominant Muslim population. It has been known by its
religious
shrine of Prophet Shuaib,
revered by Druses who used to visit every April as a site of
pilgrimage.
The village was occupied
on July 16/17, 1948, following the occupation of Nazareth by the
Israeli Seventh Sheva
Brigade, and its population was forced to cross the borders to
Lebanon. None of
Hitteen’s residents was allowed to return.
In 1949, Israel
established the Jewish colony of Arbil, north to the Arab village.
One year
later, the Jewish colony
of Kfar Zeteem was established in the same site. Both colonies
were built on the
village’s confiscated land.
Hitteen has survived in
Arab minds and souls, as its two nearby hills were the old
battlefield
of the resounding and
decisive Muslim victory, under the leadership of Saladin, over the
invading crusaders in
1187. The battle of Hitteen paved the way for Saladin’s liberation
of
Jerusalem.
The new Zionist invaders
have built four colonies in the vicinity of Hitteen and erased from
the area all Arab and
Muslim remains of that great battle.
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