Ijzim () was a village in the Haifa Subdistrict of British Mandate Palestine, 19.5 kilometers south of the city, that was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Many of its Palestinian inhabitants ended up as refugees in Jenin after a group of Israeli Special Forces, composed of members of the Golani, Carmeli and Alexandroni Brigades, attacked the village in Operation Shoter on 24 July 1948. Families from Ijzim include the Madis, the Nabhanis and the Alhassans, with the majority of the families derived from the Bani Nabhan tribe. Collectively, they owned over 40,000 dunams (40 km2) of land and were considered one of the richest villages in Palestine. History The site has been occupied since prehistoric times. It flourished especially in the Byzantine and Mamluk periods. Multiple oil presses indicate a rural economy with olives as a major product. Ottoman rule In 1596, Ijzim was a village in the nahiya of Shafa (liwa''' of Lajjun), with a population of 10 Muslim households; an estimated 55 persons. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, and olives as well as on other types of produce, such as goats and beehives; a total of 12,000 akçe. The village appeared, though misplaced, under the name of Egzim on the map that Pierre Jacotin compiled during Napoleon's invasion of 1799. Ijzim was the primary seat of the Banu Madi family and the largest locality in the region during part of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. The "area of origin" of the Madi family was the coastal region south of Carmel and the Western slopes of Jabal Nablus. At the time, the Banu Madi were the most influential family in Southern Galilee and on the coast. The heyday of the family appears to have been in the period between the end of Jazzar Pasha´s rule (1804) and the Egyptian occupation (1831). Mas'ud al-Madi was the governor of Gaza at the time of the Egyptian invasion. He lost his life because of his participation in the anti-Egyptian uprising in 1834, while other clan members were put to prison and some were able to flee to Constantinople. After the return of the Ottomans, some family members were appointed as shaykhs or governors in Ijzim, Haifa, and Safad. Yet by the 1850s the al-Madi family of Ijzim no longer constituted a local power like some