"Zafriya", ʿĀdel az-Zawaty, a Paper Clipping

Handwritten in Arabic, this paper clipping documents the name of "Zafriya", a colony established on the village of al-Safiriyya, a village set at the Central Coastal Plain with a bypass road connecting it to the main Jaffa-Ramleh Road. Al-Safiriyya was known in the Byzantine era as "Safaria" and "Savera" as the Crusaders called it. In 1596, al-Safiriyya was a village in the Ramla sub-district (the Gaza district) with a population of 292 people and its residents paid taxes on a number of products, such as cereals, wheat, barley, fruit, and sesame, in addition to other products and properties such as goats, beehives and vineyards. During the British Mandate, its residents, who were all Muslims, built their adjoining homes with bricks. The village had two primary schools, one for boys (established in 1920), and another for girls. The village was the largest producer of tomatoes in the Jaffa district, and its residents also grew oranges on a large area of ​​land. The village had visible traces indicating that it was inhabited in the past. In addition to that, in its vicinity was Khirbet Sobetra, an artificial hill surrounded by two water reservoirs on its eastern and western sides. News agencies reported that Israeli Occupation Forces (Alexandroni Brigade) captured the village on 20 May 1948 and an urgent report by the United Press International stated that the occupation of the village coincided with attacks launched by the Irgun on the city of al-Ramleh in the south. However, Palestinian historian ʿĀref al-ʿĀref states that it was occupied about a month before that, along with the occupation of the neighbouring villages of Yazur and Beit Dajan, which were attacked during Operation Bi'ur Hametz in preparation for the encirclement and occupation of Jaffa. Whatever the case, it is well established that the village was under Israeli control by September 1948, that is, on September 13, the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, asked the government for permission to demolish al-Safiriyya (as well as 13 neighbouring villages). The Israeli historian Benny Morris states that Ben-Gurion made sure that the request was in the name of the Central Front Commander, not in his own name, and he was granted permission to do so.