Samakh was the largest village in the Tiberias district in terms of area and population and was a major transportation link.

[16] In 1875, Victor Guérin found the village to be divided into two parts, and built of adobe bricks or volcanic stones.

[21] During the British Mandate era Samakh grew in importance, because of its railway station at the border of Palestine to Syria.

Through the increased prices for transporting the Goods fabricated in Damascus to Beirut, Haifa became the preferred export destination of Damascene merchants.

In Samakh those products got checked and the customs raised while the passports got controlled in the pass office of the railway line.

[26] In 1929–1935, the airfield in Samakh was used for Imperial Airways passenger services as a stop en route to Baghdad and further to Karachi.

[27] Difficult weather conditions in the area led to destruction of a Hannibal aircraft, and to relocation of the passenger services to Gaza.

[30] The village was captured by the Haganah in the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, along with the British border guard base nearby, and became a military outpost.

[31] Walid Khalidi wrote in 1992, that the structure remaining of Samakh was the ruins of the railway station and a water reservoir.

The kibbutzim Masada and Sha'ar HaGolan were established southeast of the village site in 1937, and have since expanded onto lands within Samakh's former jurisdiction.