Sharona

Sharona ( ) is an moshav in the Lower Galilee Regional Council , Israel .¹ In the early 13th century, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Sârûniyyah as "a pass near Tabariyya , you go up it to reach At Tûr " In 1596, there was a village of 17 Muslim families there. In 1870, Guérin wrote of Sarona: "This village is divided into two quarters; the houses are rudely built on two hillocks rising round a valley. This is watered from a spring enclosed in a sort of small square chamber, the floor of which is formed of large slabs, and which has a vaulted vestibule built of regular stones." About 10 years later, the Survey of Western Palestine noted "basaltic stone houses, containing about 250 Moslems, situated in arable plain, without trees." In 1878 Sarona was settled by Circassian refugees from the Caucasus , but by 1910 they had moved elsewhere and had been replaced by Arabs. The land was purchased from the Arabs by the Jewish Colonization Association in 1910. In 1913, a Jewish settlement called Rama, but also called Sarona, was established close to the Arab village by ahuza (estate) members from Chicago . The impact of World War I, poor conditions, and the lack of sufficient manpower kept the new settlement improverished and debt-ridden. In 1922, the new and old settlements together contained 77 Arabs but only 15 Jews. In the summer at the end of 1923, additional Jewish settlers, Brisk kevutzah from Kfar Yehezkel , arrived with help from the Jewish National Fund , but by the end of 1928 the settlement had been abandoned and the land returned to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association , the heir to the Jewish Colonization Association. Half the land was leased to Arab tenants. In 1938 a moshav was established by members of the Gordania organization, with the cost borne by the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association and the Agricultural Workers Federation . In 1945, the population was recorded as 110 Jews and no Arabs.²