Ein Hod: The ethnically cleansed Palestinian village that became an Israeli artists' colony

The stone village of Ein Hod sits on the slopes of Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Narrow winding roads, old cactus fences and galleries are scattered between preserved Palestinian homes.

When Yara Mahajneh, an independent Palestinian artist, arrived there one evening carrying equipment for an exhibition, she found gates, guards and restricted entry surrounding the quiet artists' village.

"What kind of protection does a peaceful, liberal artists' village need?" she recalled asking.

Mahajneh was attending her graduate exhibition at the Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod, a former Palestinian village known as Ein Hawd that was later transformed into an Israeli artists' colony.

"We studied European and Israeli art, but not Palestinian art or the story of the village itself".

Before 1948, Palestinian families from the Abu al-Hija clan lived there.

Palestinian historian and philologist Mustafa Kabha says the family's local history is tied to the wider Abu al-Hija presence in Palestine, whose roots are often traced in local narratives to fighters who arrived with Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi during the Crusader period.

"The village was inhabited mainly by the Abu al-Hija family," Kabha said, adding that its history is connected to other Abu al-Hija communities across Palestine, including Kawkab Abu al-Hija, which still exists today, and the displaced village of al-Hadatha near Tiberias.

By 1948, Ein Hawd had a population of around 800 to 850 residents, according to Sameer Abu al-Hija, a Palestinian historian and descendant of villagers displaced during the Nakba.

The village, however, fell in July 1948, after the seizure of Haifa just to the north and several nearby Palestinian villages by Israeli forces.

"People feared for the safety of women, children and the elderly," he said. "After two heavy battles with well-armed Zionist forces, the village fell and the people were forced out."

Some Palestinians fled towards Wadi Ara and Jenin, while others reached nearby Daliyat al-Karmel.

Families who later attempted to return settled on land surrounding the village, but were barred from re-entering their original homes.

At first, displaced Palestinians built simple shelters. These were later replaced by tin and mud structures and eventually by concrete homes.

Unlike many Palestinian villages depopulated during the Nakba, Ein Hawd was not completely demolished. Its stone houses remained standing, but its residents were prevented from returning.

Bedrooms on show

In the early 1950s, after a brief period during which Jewish immigrants from North Africa lived there, the village was transformed into an Israeli artists' colony now known as Ein Hod.

According to Abu al-Hija, the transformation began after artist Marcel Janco visited the village and saw in its preserved stone homes and landscape an ideal setting for artists, writers and sculptors.

Decades later, the village's story has taken on a deeply surreal dimension.

While displaced residents rebuilt homes on a nearby hillside, the original stone houses they left behind were gradually converted into galleries, museums and artists' studios.

Today, sculptures line the narrow paths of the village, while cafes, workshops and galleries operate inside preserved Palestinian homes. Bedrooms have become exhibition spaces, and family living rooms now host performances and cultural events.

For Mahajneh, that contradiction only became fully visible years later, after she was invited to exhibit her graduation project - Katibet Mheileh - which explored trauma among Palestinian women inside the Janco Dada Museum.

"I started asking myself: why here?" she said. "There are galleries everywhere. Why this place specifically?"

Palestinian trauma and memory were being exhibited inside the preserved homes of a depopulated Palestinian village, while descendants of the families who once lived there remained uphill, unable to return.

"At some point, I felt that we also became objects in the gallery," Mahajneh said. "We were serving a purpose inside this space."

Deeply personal

For Abu al-Hija, the transformation of the village is not an abstract political or artistic issue. It is deeply personal.

"The mosque is still there," he said. "But people avoid going near it after it was turned into a restaurant and bar."

Many of the original homes also remain standing, he said, but are inaccessible to the families who once lived in them.

Kabha says the story of Ein Hawd raises broader questions about memory, ownership and narrative: who controls the Palestinian story when the land, the houses and even the cultural spaces are no longer controlled by Palestinians?

He argues that the issue is not only that Palestinian villages were destroyed or transformed after 1948, but that many of their histories were pushed out of public memory altogether.

"Hundreds of Palestinian village stories were never really told," he said.

Mahajneh says that absence reflects a wider reality in which Palestinians inside Israel are often disconnected from their own histories, even within spaces that present themselves as liberal and inclusive.

Even as a Palestinian art student in Haifa, surrounded by Arab students and left-wing lecturers, she says the story of Ein Hawd was never part of the curriculum.

In that sense, Ein Hawd becomes more than a village transformed into an artists’ colony. It becomes an example of how Palestinian history can remain physically present - in stones, houses, mosques and cemeteries - while being erased from the official narrative built around them.

Today, Palestinians still pass the houses their families once lived in on their way to work, while tourists and artists continue moving through galleries built inside them.