Meiser

Meiser is listed as locality 649 by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, situated within the Menashe Regional Council in the Hadera sub-district of the Haifa District.[1] A CBS table for 2020 placed the village 44.5855 kilometers from the boundary of the Tel Aviv District and assigned it a peripherality-index value of 0.2817 and a rank of 813 among Israeli localities.[2]

Meiser lies beside Kibbutz Metzer.[3] A Ynet travel article also places it on a walking route through Wadi Barta'a that passes through Barta'a and Um El-Kutuf before continuing toward Metzer and Meiser.[4]

Meiser and neighboring Kibbutz Metzer have maintained documented forms of cooperation.[4] For a period, the communities operated a joint school. Metzer kibbutz secretary Dov Avital described why it ended: "We also used to have a joint school between Metzer and Meisar, but we found that it was too hard for the children to be integrated into their respective high schools after being in the school."[5]

Informal contact also took place at the kibbutz playground. Avital said, "This is where Arab children from Meisar would come with their mothers and play." The report states that these visits stopped after the November 10, 2002 terrorist attack at Metzer.[5]

In 1972, an artistic initiative between the communities included an exchange of land. That initiative later became the basis for a renewed cultural project involving artists working in the area between Meiser and Metzer.[3]

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics 2022 locality file records Meiser's population at 2,115 residents, including 2,106 Arabs and 9 Jews and others.[1] This makes the village almost entirely Arab in composition. An earlier CBS table recorded a population of 2,072 in 2020, indicating modest growth between the two reported years.[2]

Cultural cooperation with Kibbutz Metzer has included the exhibition "Metzer–Meiser: Take2" at the Common Art Center, which is housed in a former British aircraft hangar. The exhibition brought together works by artists active in the area between the communities and sought to create continuity and dialogue while raising questions about shared life.[3]

One displayed work consisted of a clothesline bearing garments collected from both communities. A galabiya hung alongside a blue Hashomer Hatzair shirt, presenting the neighboring communities' distinct but connected identities.[3]

On November 10, 2002, a terrorist attack was carried out at neighboring Kibbutz Metzer. A Jerusalem Post report directly linked the attack to the end of visits by Meiser children and their mothers to the kibbutz playground.[5] The former joint school had ended for a separately stated reason: difficulties experienced by pupils when they later entered their respective high schools.[5] Differing reported accounts of the attacker's identity are discussed under Controversies.

Meiser has been affected by flooding in the Sharon region. A Ynet report stated that ten families were evacuated from their homes in the village because of flooding. On the same day, the Menashe regional center flooded and students were evacuated from three schools there.[6]

In a separate incident, 10-year-old Omer Shadi Azzam, a resident of Tayibe who had come to Meiser to visit relatives, was struck by an electric scooter in the village. He was taken to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, where his death was pronounced.[7]

A 2006 Jerusalem Post report presented differing attributed accounts of the November 10, 2002 terrorist attack on Kibbutz Metzer. The report identified the attacker as Fatah gunman Sirhan Sirhan, while Kaffin mayor Taisir Harashi was quoted as saying, "In my opinion, we don't know really who attacked the kibbutz."[5] The source reports these positions but does not independently resolve the disagreement.