Simsim, Gaza

Roman to Crusader periods

Simsim contained two archaeological sites known locally as ar-Ras and Sha'fat al-Mughur (the latter of which contained a Roman cemetery).^[6] Byzantine ceramics have been found here.^[8] The village was known as Semsem to the Crusaders.^[5]

Ottoman period

Simsim was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and by 1596 it was part of the nahiya (subdistrict) of Gaza under the liwa' (district) of Sanjak of Gaza, and it had 20 Muslim households, an estimated population of 110. They paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and fruit trees, as well as on goats and beehives; a total of 6,800 Akçe. 14/24 of the revenue went to a Waqf.^[9]

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area of Simsim experienced a significant process of settlement decline due to nomadic pressures on local communities. The residents of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, but the land continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages.^[10]

British Mandate

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Semsem had a population of 760 inhabitants, all Muslims,^[19] increasing in the 1931 census, when Sumsum had a population of 855 Muslims in 195 houses.^[20]

In 1942, the kibbutz of Gvar'am was established on land traditionally belonging to the village.^[5]

In the 1945 statistics, the population of Sumsum consisted of 1,290 Muslims and 70 Jews,^[4] while the total land area was 16,797 dunams, according to an official land and population survey.^[3] Of this, a total of 240 dunams were used citrus and bananas, 252 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 15,582 for cereals,^[21] while 44 dunams were built-up areas.^[22]

1948 war and destruction

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the villagers of Simsim, together with the surrounding villages, were driven out by soldiers from the Negev Brigade on 12–13 May 1948 as part of Operation Barak. In Simsim the occupying troops found only a handful of old people. They blew up five houses and warned that if the village's weapons were not handed over the following day, they would blow up the rest.^[23] But the inhabitants repeatedly returned to the village, either to resettle or to cultivate crops. At the end of May, a Negev Brigade unit, with orders to expel "the Arabs from Sumsum and Burayr and burn their granaries and fields", swept through the villages, encountering resistance in Sumsum, and killed "5" (or, according to another report, "20") and blew up granaries and a well.^[24] Historian Saleh Abdel Jawad writes that a massacre occurred in the village on 13 May.^[25] The Israeli troops returned to Simsim yet again, on 9 or 10 June 1948, again burning houses and skirmishing with Arabs.^[26]

Or HaNer, established in 1957, lie less than one km south of the village site, on land formerly belonging to Najd, Gaza.^[5]

In 1992, the village's remains were described by Walid Khalidi: "The village has been obliterated and can only be recognised from the cypress and sycamore trees that still remain. A pile of stones that may be the debris of a village building is visible. The site is fenced in and serves as a pasture. The land in the vicinity are cultivated by Israeli farmers."^[5]