Malkia

Malkia sits in the Eastern Upper Galilee and is represented in the Ha-Galil ha-Elyon Regional Council.[1] The kibbutz is positioned on a mountain ridge at roughly 700 meters.[3] Its lookout commands views of the vineyards of the Kadesh Valley, Mount Keren Naftali, the historic Yishuv Fortress (the former Nabi Yusha police station), the Hula Valley, the Golan Heights, and Mount Hermon.[7] A covered observation balcony with an audio station explains the battles fought on the ridge, and a path to it passes the kibbutz's battle memorials.[7]

The Jabal al-Deir outpost on the Lebanese border overlooks Avivim and Malkia, underscoring the kibbutz's exposed position along the frontier.[8] A paved road from Tyre through Bint Jbeil historically entered Israel through the Malkia area, making the ridge a natural chokepoint for movement between Lebanon and the Galilee.[9]

Before the 1948 War of Independence, an Arab village stood at the site of present-day Malkia, on a main route from Lebanon into the country.[2] Malkiyyah lay on the route chosen by the Lebanese army and near the Arab-held Nabi Yusha fort overlooking the Huleh Valley.[6] A paved road connecting Tyre and Bint Jbeil entered Israel through the area, lending it immediate military significance at the outbreak of hostilities.[9]

On the night of May 14–15, 1948, a battalion of the Palmach's Yiftaḥ Brigade crossed the mountains on foot and captured Malkiyyah and the nearby village of Kadesh after heavy fighting.[6] A Lebanese counterattack the following day forced the Palmach to withdraw.[6] After a unit infiltrated into Lebanon and cut a supply route, the Palmach retook Malkiyyah on May 18, approaching from the rear—from inside Lebanese territory.[6] A memorial at the site commemorates 25 Palmach fighters who fell in the May 1948 battle; the location is known as Givat HaLoḥamim, or Fighters' Hill, in the southeastern part of the kibbutz.[2]

The settlement changed hands again on June 5–6, 1948. About 80 members of Company A of the Oded Brigade's 11th Battalion, who had taken over from the Harel Brigade as guards on the ridge, were attacked by Lebanese forces reinforced by Syrian armored cars and Arab Liberation Army units.[9] A combined Syrian, Lebanese, and Arab Liberation Army force overran the small Israeli garrison, and ALA units passed through the gap to consolidate positions in central Galilee, where they remained when the truce took effect.[6] Israeli forces under the 7th Brigade recaptured Malkiyyah by surprise on the night of October 28, 1948, during Operation Hiram, approaching from the south.[6] The capture relieved pressure on Manarah and formed part of the operation that ended with the Arab Liberation Army evacuating the area; by the October 31 ceasefire, the whole Galilee was clear of that force.[6]

The IDF gained control of the full Galilee, including Malkia, toward the end of 1948, and the kibbutz was formally established there in March 1949.[2] Its founding members came from six Palmach training groups whose members had trained at kibbutzim including Gvulot, Tel Yosef, and Kinneret.[5] The official date of establishment was 24 March 1949, corresponding to 23 Adar 5709.[5] A second memorial on Givat Gandi—named for Rehavam Zeevi, who commanded the Malkia platoon—commemorates 21 members of the founding training groups who fell in the War of Independence before the settlement was established.[4]

Rebekah (Rivkele) and Rafael (Frol) Atzmon were among Malkia's founders; Frol had served in the Palmach's Sixth Battalion.[5] The early settlers built the kibbutz's economic infrastructure largely with their own hands: Frol Atzmon fabricated a quarry screening machine in a Haifa workshop, and members assembled the quarry's silo tower and systems themselves.[5] An early act of community enterprise recorded in kibbutz memory involved members using their farm truck to move heavy British fuel tanks from near Mahanaim to Ramat David for the nascent Israeli Air Force; the tanks weighed more than ten tons, and the crew eventually abandoned an attempt to keep one as a reward after it nearly rolled downhill near the Nabi Yusha police station.[5]

The kibbutz's dining hall, a landmark of communal life, was designed by Haifa architect Shlomo Gilad.[10] The original 400-square-meter building opened in 1966, replacing an earlier shed.[10] As the community grew, members commissioned Gilad again in the early 1980s to expand the hall to 2,000 square meters; the enlarged building opened in 1985 and incorporated a general store, library, a 407-seat performance hall, and a members' club—built in exposed concrete and funded by liquidating the kibbutz's savings.[10] Following privatization, communal meal service ended in 2004, leaving the large dining area unused while the library, store, and club continued to operate.[10]

The Encyclopaedia Judaica recorded a population of 323 inhabitants as of December 31, 2004.[1] A 2013 Ynet profile reported 70 resident families, with the kibbutz then absorbing an additional 40 families, and 43 housing units in an expansion area.[3] Before the evacuation of northern communities following the October 7, 2023 attacks, Maariv reported Malkia's population at approximately 450 residents.[11]

The kibbutz's agricultural profile, as described in 2013, included apples, cherries, and kiwi; roughly 500 dunams of vineyards; a cattle herd of about 450 head; and field crops along with an orange grove, persimmons, and almonds cultivated in the Hula Valley.[3] The National Library of Israel's catalog lists 110 archival items, 57 photographs, seven books, and five items in other content types relating to Malkia—among them a membership booklet and a volume titled "The Palmach Enters Malkia"—reflecting the extent of the settlement's documented history.[12]

Malkia's proximity to the Lebanese border has exposed it to repeated Hezbollah attacks, particularly during the escalation that followed October 7, 2023. On May 8, 2024, Staff Sgt. Haim Sabach, a 20-year-old infantry soldier from Holon, was killed by a mortar shell fired from Lebanon at a military post in the Malkiya area.[13] His death prompted Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to visit northern Israel and vow to "restore security to the residents of the north."[13] The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center placed that incident on a day when Hezbollah carried out 12 attacks, including UAV strikes and the firing of a heavy Burkan rocket.[14]

Five days later, on May 13—Israel's Memorial Day—Hezbollah launched two anti-tank missiles into Malkia, lightly injuring three Israeli soldiers and moderately injuring a fourth; medics evacuated all four to Ziv Medical Center in Safed.[15] On May 19, 2024, Hezbollah opened a wider barrage of projectiles against northern Israel with strikes aimed at Malkia, which had already been struck multiple times that month.[16] That sequence formed part of an estimated 40 Hezbollah attacks across northern Israel within a 72-hour period.[16] The Meir Amit Center also recorded two Hezbollah-claimed attacks in the "Margaliot-Malkia region" on May 27, 2024, though specific weapons, casualties, and damage details were not provided for those strikes.[17]

In August 2024, an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese village of Aitaroun killed a Hezbollah operative who had fired rockets toward Kibbutz Malkia.[18] The strike was one of four Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon that day, which together killed at least six Hezbollah operatives.[18] The report provided no information about casualties or damage in Malkia from those rockets.[18] Maariv reported that during the evacuation of northern communities, most Malkia residents relocated to the Nof Kinneret hotel in Tiberias, while about 30 people—primarily members of the kibbutz's local security squad—remained to maintain infrastructure and agricultural areas.[11]

Community manager Itai Kroiz attributed recurring orchard fires to fires set on the Lebanese side when westward winds carried the flames toward Malkia. He told Maariv that in summer 2023, one such fire threatened a kiwi crop valued at approximately one million shekels shortly before harvest; about 15 people worked to extinguish it alongside a fire engine and two soldiers.[11]

The kibbutz preserves several distinct memorials to the soldiers who fell in the battles for Malkia. Givat HaLoḥamim (Fighters' Hill), in the southeastern part of the kibbutz, commemorates the 25 Palmach fighters killed in the May 1948 battle; the site is near the Israel–Lebanon border, north of Rosh Pina.[2] On May 15, 1949—the first anniversary of the battle—a memorial ceremony was held at a mass grave in Kibbutz Maoz Haim for members of the Yiftach Brigade's 1st Battalion who fell at Malkia; the event was documented in a photograph by Shimon Cahaner, now preserved in the Boris Carmi Archive.[19]

Givat Gandi, named for Rehavam Zeevi, who commanded the Malkia platoon, holds a separate memorial to 21 members of the founding Palmach training groups who fell in the war before the kibbutz was established. One of the defensive forces had been stationed on the hill during the fighting.[4] The kibbutz lookout, reached by a path that passes the battle memorials, provides panoramic views and an audio station recounting the fighting for the ridge.[7]

Decades of uncertainty about fallen soldiers in the area were partially resolved in 2026, when an IDF investigation lasting more than five years determined that Private Dov (Dova) Peramat—a member of Company A, 11th Battalion, Oded Brigade, who fell in the Malkia area on June 5, 1948—had been buried in a mass grave at Kibbutz Maoz Haim alongside 16 other fallen soldiers.[20] Investigators concluded that his body had been moved on November 18, 1948, from a temporary enemy mass grave at "Givat HaEtz" in Malkia to the grave at Maoz Haim; the investigation drew on documents, witness interviews, ground analysis, and archaeological surveys.[20]

The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs argues that the former village of Al-Malekiyya and six neighboring villages in the northern Galilee were initially within Lebanon under the French Mandate and were later incorporated into Mandatory Palestine under a Franco-British agreement, with residents retaining Lebanese citizenship.[21] That source argues further that Lebanon accepted the 1923 border demarcation after the 1949 armistice agreement, relinquishing its claim to the villages, which remained under Israeli sovereignty.[21]

Hezbollah has invoked the history of these villages in its political messaging. The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs attributes to Hezbollah the claim that Israel destroyed seven Shiite villages in the northern Galilee during the 1948 war and that their residents were deported or driven from their homes and never returned, with Hezbollah later demanding their restitution.[21] Separately, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs notes that Hezbollah's reported plan to conquer the Galilee—first articulated by Hassan Nasrallah in 2011—assigned Brigade 4 the specific task of taking over the communities of Malkiya, Ramot Naftali, and Yiftach.[22] These are assessments from a security-focused source about Hezbollah's stated aims, not independently verified operational facts.