Samakh () was a Palestinian Arab village at the south end of Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) in Ottoman Galilee and later Mandatory Palestine (now in Israel). It was the site of battle in 1918 during World War I. Between 1905 and 1948, the town was an important stop on the Jezreel Valley railway and Hejaz railway, being the last effective stop in the British Mandate of Palestine (the station at al-Hamma was geographically isolated). It had a population of 3,320 Arab Muslims and Arab Christians in 1945. The town's inhabitants fled after Haganah forces captured the town on 3 March 1948, and the remainder left in the wake of an assault by the Golani Brigade against the Syrian army on 18 April 1948. Most of the former residents became internally displaced refugees in the Arab city of Nazareth. Today, the Tzemah Industrial Zone and part of kibbutz Ma'agan are on the site of the former village. Location The village was on flat land in the Jordan Valley, on the southernmost shore of Lake Tiberias, only a short distance east of the point where River Jordan exits from the lake. Samakh was the largest village in the Tiberias district, both in terms of area and population, and was a major transportation link. The village was served by a station on the railroad line that ran on the Jezreel Valley railway, an extension of the Hejaz Railway. It lay on a highway that ran along the lake shore and led to the city of Tiberias in the northwest. Sailing routes on Lake Tiberias also linked Samakh with Tiberias's harbour. History Ottoman era In the late Ottoman era, Pierre Jacotin named the village Semak on his map from 1799. Most houses were built of adobe, but some were built of the black (basalt) stone that was abundant in the Golan area near Samakh. Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, a Swiss traveler to Palestine who saw the village (which he called Szammagh), in 1812, described it as a collection of thirty or forty mud houses alongside more costly houses built of black stone. He said about 100 faddans (1 fadda = 100–250 dunams) were cultivated in the immediate vicinity. In 1838 Edward Robinson also found the village to contain 30-40 adobe huts, and a few built of black stone. In 1875, Victor Guérin found the village to be divided into two parts, and built