Moshav Sde Trumot
June 21, 2025
Hamadiah Colony
June 21, 2025The Ergon Borochov Colony was established in 1943, near the depopulated Palestinian village of Al-Tira, in the District of Baysan. On September 10, 1948, another Zionist settlement organization took over the colony and renamed it Kibbutz Gazit. Later that same year, the village of Al-Tira was incorporated into the kibbutz. Gazit is located approximately 1.5 kilometers south of the original village site, and on its lands.
The village of Al-Tira was situated on a slightly elevated hill overlooking the steep slopes of Wadi al-Bira to the north and northeast, and flat lands to the west and southwest. A secondary road connected it to the main road leading to Samakh in the north and Beisan (Beit She’an) in the south. Similar paths and unpaved roads linked it to neighboring villages and to the Ein al-Bayda spring, the village’s main water source. There was also a local shrine to a religious figure, Sheikh Diyab, located south of the village.
The inhabitants of Al-Tira were Muslims, primarily dependent on agriculture. In 1944–1945, a total of 4,326 dunams was allocated for cereal cultivation, and 56 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards. The ruins of Khirbet al-Tira were located to the south of the village, where archaeological excavations revealed ancient remains, including caves and water cisterns.
Sources:
- All That Remains, by Walid Khalidi (entry on the village of Al-Tira)
- Israeli sourceswere used due to the scarcity of Arabic materials: Israeli postal code database, Hebrew-language website of the settlement, and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics