Jaba was in the territory allotted to the Jewish state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. During the war the militia from the village fired on Jewish vehicles along the essential coast road. In early June 1948, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) report shows that Ja'ba, together with Ijzim and Ayn Ghazal, were asking the IDF, "to open negotiation for surrender." Nothing resulted from the request. On 14 July, before the , the Israeli cabinet discussed the three villages in "The Little Triangle". Ben-Gurion said that there was no need to hurry:"these villages are in our pocket [...] We can act against them also after the [reinstitution of the] truce. This will be a police action... They are not regarded as enemy forces as their area is ours [i.e., in Israel] and they are inhabitants of the state...[and] these villages do not represent a military danger."