Zarzir (Arabic: زرزير, Hebrew: זַרְזִיר), also known as Beit Zarzir, is an Arablocal council located 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) west of the city of Nazareth in the Northern District of Israel. In 2022 it had a population of 8,565,[1] consisting of five Bedouin tribes, Mazarib, Grifat, Haib, Jawamis, and Eyadat.
Service in the IDF
A few kilometres away, at HaMovil Junction, there is a memorial to the Bedouin soldiers of the IDF fallen since 1948, 230 of them by 2022.[2] The Monument to the Bedouin Soldier (sometimes translated a Fighter or Warrior), established at a site close to Bedouin and other Israeli Arab towns, was inaugurated on Independence Day in 1993 by then-Prime MinisterYitzhak Rabin.[2] The memorial includes a museum of Bedouin heritage and a garden with medicinal herbs.[2]
On June 6, 2024, during the Hamas-Israel war, an IDF soldier from Zarzir was killed in action in the Gaza Strip by Hamas gunmen who were trying to infiltrate through the border fence into Israel. Warrant Officer Zeed Mazarib, 34, was part of a force of Bedouin trackers from the Desert Reconnaissance Battalion sent to intercept the Hamas cell.[3]
Dr. Tomer Mazarib, The Integration Process of the Bedouin population into Arab Villages and Towns in the Galilee: Historical, Social and Cultural Aspects from the beginning of the 18th Century to the end of the 20th Century (Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 2016).
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