This post was published in 2000.

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.