'Ayn Ghazal (, "Spring of the Gazelle") was a Palestinian Arab village located south of Haifa. Depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as a result of an Israeli military assault during Operation Shoter, the village was then completely destroyed. Incorporated into the State of Israel, it is now mostly a forested area. The Israeli moshav of Ofer ("fawn") was established in 1950 on part of the former village's lands. Ein Ayala, a moshav established in 1949, lies just adjacent; its name being the Hebrew translation of Ayn Ghazal.
History
In 1517 the area of 'Ayn Ghazal was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine. During the 16th and 17th centuries, it belonged to the Turabay Emirate (1517-1683), which encompassed also the Jezreel Valley, Haifa, Jenin, Beit She'an Valley, northern Jabal Nablus, Bilad al-Ruha/Ramot Menashe, and the northern part of the Sharon plain.
In 1799, it appeared as the village Ain Elgazal on the map that Pierre Jacotin compiled that year, though it was misplaced.
In 1870, Victor Guérin passed by, and noted that the village had 290 inhabitants. It was divided into two sections, and surrounded by tobacco plantations.
Under Ottoman rule like much of the rest of Palestine in the late 19th century, Ayn Ghazal was described as a small village built of stone and mud, with about 450 residents. The villagers cultivated 35 Faddans of land (1 faddan is equal to 100-250 dunams). Much of the land in the Ayn Ghazal and the neighbouring villages of Jaba', Khubiza, Tira, and Sarafand was owned by the sons of Abdel al-Latif al-Salah, who himself owned the entire village of Ji'ara. All these villages became entirely dependent upon the Salah family because of loans they took from them or as a result of the family's commercial activities.
Ayn Ghazal had two schools: an elementary school for boys founded by the Ottomans in 1886, and an elementary school for girls. The village also had a cultural club and an athletic club. The villagers were Muslim, and they maintained a Maqam (shrine) for a local sage named Sheikh Shahada.
A population list from about 1887 showed that Ain Ghuzal had about 910 inhabitants; all Muslims, while in the early twentieth century the number of inhabitants was given as 883, and a mosque and a school in the village was noted by travellers.
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, ‘Ain Ghazal had a population of 1,046, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census, when it was counted with Khirbat al-Sawamir, to 1,439, still all Muslims, in 247 houses.
In the 1945 statistics the population was 2,170, all Muslims, and it had a total of 18,079 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. 1,486 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 8,472 for cereals, while 130 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
1948, and aftermath
When the conflict started, the village was poorly armed. Israeli intelligence estimated the village arsenal at a total of 87 weapons by mid-1947; including 23 obsolete rifles and 45 pistols. The November 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine allocated Ayn Ghazal and other Arab villages in the Haifa district of Mandate Palestine to the proposed Jewish state, which alongside the Arab state, was to be established upon termination of the British Mandate, scheduled for May 15, 1948. Ayn Ghazal and the neighboring village of Ayn Hawd were attacked on the evening of April 11, 1948, according to the Palestinian newspaper Filastin, who reported that a group of 150 Jewish troops were unsuccessful in driving out the inhabitants. Arab states responded to Israel's Declaration of Independence on May 15, 1948, by sending in Arab troops, kicking off the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. On May 20, the Associated Press reported that another attack on Ayn Ghazal and Ayn Hawd had been thwarted.
In early June 1948, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) report shows that Ayn Ghazal, together with Ijzim and Ja'ba, were asking the IDF, "to open negotiation for surrender." Nothing resulted from the request. On 14 July, before the Second truce of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Israeli cabinet discussed the three villages in "The Little Triangle". Ben-Gurion said that there was no need to hurry: "these villages are in our pocket [...] We can act against them also after the [reinstitution of the] truce. This will be a police action... They are not regarded as enemy forces as their area is ours [i.e., in Israel] and they are inhabitants of the state...[and] these villages do not represent a military danger." The second truce, beginning on the 18 July, was not violated by the villagers.