Located in the northern Jordan Valley near the Sea of Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Emek HaYarden Regional Council.

In the area Hadera, there used to be Jewish farms, and the place was part of the efforts to establish agricultural settlements in Israel.

As with Sha'ar HaGolan, the kibbutz's defenders retreated during the Battles of the Kinarot Valley of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War after holding out for four days of fighting.

Although the members made every reasonable effort to defend their kibbutz and returned soon after the events, a stigma was attached to them, and vindication in the form of released military records only arrived in recent years, decades too late.

Masada, like dozens of the kibbutzim near the Sea of Galilee, existed under the threat from both the Syrian Golan Heights towering from the east, and the Jordanians across the Yarmouk River.