Ma'alot-Tarshiha (Hebrew: מעלות-תרשיחא; Arabic: معالوت ترشيحا) is a city in the North District in Israel, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Nahariya, and about 600 metres (1,969 feet) above sea level.

[6] In 1160, Torsia and several surrounding villages were transferred to a Crusader named Iohanni de Caypha (Johannes of Haifa).

[8] In 1220 Joscelin III´s daughter Beatrix de Courtenay and her husband Otto von Botenlauben, Count of Henneberg, sold their land, including Tersyha, to the Teutonic Knights.

[10] Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with the rest of Palestine, the village of Tarshiha was raided by the Lebanese feudal chief, Mansur ibn Furaykh in 1573.

[5] The daftar of 1596 show the village to be under the administration of the nahiya of Akka, with a population of 107 households ("khana") and 3 bachelors, all Muslim.

[14] Mariti visited the village (which he called Terschia) in 1761, and wrote that it "abounds with water; which adds greatly to the fertility of its cotton plants, its fruit-trees, and above all its tobacco".

[17] In 1883, Laurence Oliphant visited and wrote that Tershicha was home to around 2,000 people, most of whom were followers of Ali Al-Mughrabi, an Islamic sheikh and reformer who immigrated from North Africa.

[29] Residents of Ma'alot-Tarshiha interviewed in early 1980s recalled Tarshiha as being the leading village in the area with a population of 3,000 including 700 Christians.

Tarshiha was the first Palestinian village to establish a development fund by collecting £1 a year from each adult male resident.

On the day of the liberation of Tyre, 8 June 1941, the advance of the Australians "took place from the ground early in the morning on Sunday.

[32] Following the establishment of the state of Israel Tarshiha was surrounded on three sides by the Israeli army and the border with Lebanon to the North.

Tarshiha and sixteen smaller villages established a regional committee which organised the reopening of schools, regulated imports from Lebanon as well as attending to security and defence.

[33] In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Tarshiha was attacked by the newly formed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during Operation Hiram.

[37] A UN observer reported that on 1 November 1948 the Arab villages around Tarshiha were deserted and extensively looted by Israeli forces.

[39] Families from Tarshiha began arriving in Beirut shortly after the conquest of the village and lived in rented rooms around Bourj el Barajneh which at that time was a suburb on the fringe of the city.

Those villagers who were unable to reach Beirut in 1948 were rounded up and sent by train to Aleppo were they became the largest group in al-Neirab Camp.

[33] In December 1949 the Israeli Foreign Ministry blocked an IDF plan to clear Tarshiha and five other villages along the Lebanon border of their remaining Arab populations to create an 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) Arab-free zone.

In 1963, Tarshiha was merged with Ma'alot, a development town for Jewish immigrants from Romania, Iran and Morocco, established in 1957.

[44] In addition, three Israeli women, one of them seven months pregnant, one four-year-old child, and two men were killed by the same terrorists in the events before the murder of the school children.

[50] The Tefen Industrial Zone, which includes famous companies such as the Iscar plant was built in the vicinity of Ma'alot-Tarshiha by Stef Wertheimer and is major source of employment for the city's residents.

Victor Guérin, after his 1875 visit, wrote that the principal mosque in Tarshiha had been built by Abdullah Pasha, (the Governor of Acre at the time.)

"[52] Andrew Petersen, who inspected the mosque in 1993, noted that it was built in "classical Ottoman style with four main elements: a courtyard, an arcade, a domed prayer hall, and a minaret.

[55] In 2009, the non-profit Docaviv established an annual documentary film festival in the city in an effort to bring "high quality cultural activity to the Israeli periphery.