Sa'sa' (, ) was a Palestinian village, located 12 kilometres northwest of Safed that was depopulated by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The village suffered two massacres committed by Haganah forces: one in mid-February 1948 and the other at the end of October the same year. Its place has been taken since 1949 by Sasa, an Israeli kibbutz. History Sa'sa' was built on the site of a Bronze Age (early second millennium B.C.) settlement whose remains (walls, tombs, cisterns, and olive and wine presses), have been unearthed. One village house had foundations which has been dated back to fourth century by archaeologists. Another excavated in 2003 yielded ceramics dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE. The Arab geographer Abū 'Ubayd 'Abd Allāh al-Bakrī (d.1094) reported that one passed through Sa'sa' when travelling from Dayr al-Qasi to Safad. Ottoman era In 1516 Sa'sa', with the rest of Palestine, came under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Shortly after, Sa'sa' was made a checkpoint where a toll was collected on various goods and travellers; the first records of such taxes are from 1525/6. In 1596 Sa'sa' was classified as a village in the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jira, part of liwa' ("district") of Safad, with a population of 457. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives and fruits, as well as on goats, beehives, and vineyards. According to this tax records, all the villagers were Muslim. In the eighteenth century Sa'sa' in mentioned as one of the fortified villages of Galilee controlled by Zahir al-Umar's son, Ali. After the defeat of Zahir al-Umar in 1775 Ali continued to resist the Ottoman authorities and defeated an army sent against him at Sa'sa'. Excavations in 1972 on the west side of the hill revealed the remains of a large rectangular structure (15m x 41 m) with 2m thick walls made out of rubble stone with ashlar facing. At the south-west corner of the building there was a solid semi-circular tower (diameter 7m). The main part of the structure is a rectangular hall divided into two rows of five bays. There was a central row of four piers and two half-piers which would probably have supported a cross-vaulted roof. In a later phase an outer skin (2m wide) was added, making the wall a total of 4m thick. At the same time the round tower was converted into a square plan. According to the excavators,