Bayt Naqquba ( ar, بيت نقّوبة, he, בית נקובא, also spelled Bait Naqquba) was a Palestinian village in

British Mandate Palestine Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 i ...

, located 9.5 kilometers west of Jerusalem, near

Abu Ghosh Abu Ghosh ( ar, أبو غوش; he, אבו גוש) is an Arab-Israeli local council in Israel, located west of Jerusalem on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem highway. It is situated 610–720 meters above sea level. It takes its current name from the d ...

. Before

Palmach The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach ...

and

Haganah Haganah ( he, הַהֲגָנָה, lit. ''The Defence'') was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the ...

troops occupied the village during

Operation Nachshon Operation Nachshon ( he, מבצע נחשון, ''Mivtza Nahshon'') was a Jewish military operation during the 1948 war. Lasting from 5–16 April 1948, its objective was to break the Siege of Jerusalem by opening the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road ...

on April 11, 1948, approximately 300 Palestinian Arabs lived there. After the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had ...

, a

moshav A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 an ...

named

Beit Nekofa Beit Nekofa ( he, בֵּית נְקוֹפָה) is a moshav in the Jerusalem District of Israel. Located in the Jerusalem Corridor, about 10 km west of central Jerusalem, next to Highway 1 and the , between Mevaseret Zion and Kiryat Ye'arim ...

was founded close to the site by Jewish immigrants from Yugoslavia. In 1962, residents of Bayt Naqubba built a new village named Ein Naqquba, south of Beit Nekofa.

History

In 1838 ''Beit Nikoba'' was noted as a

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

village, located in the District of ''Beni Malik'', west of Jerusalem. In 1863 Victor Guérin found the village located on cultivated slopes, with 200 inhabitants, while an Ottoman village list from about 1870 found 23 houses and a population of 88, though that population count included men, only.Socin, 1879, p
146
Also noted to be in the ''Beni Malik'' district In 1883, the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described Bayt Naqquba as a village built on a slope with a spring to the south. Around 1896 the population of ''Bet Nakuba'' was estimated to be about 135 persons.

British Mandate era

In the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divisi ...

, during the early British Mandate of Palestine period, there were 120 villagers, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 177 Muslims, in 41 houses. The villagers planted olive trees and vineyards, which grew mainly west of the village and on the valley floors, and irrigated their crops with water drawn from the village springs. Olive trees covered 194 dunum of land. In the 1944/5 statistics, the village had a population of 240 Muslims, and the total land area was 2,797

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

s.Department of Statistics, 1945, p
24
/ref>Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
56
/ref> 303 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, 515 dunams were for cereals, while 9 dunams were built-up (urban) Arab land.

1948, and after

Like the people of Abu Ghosh, the inhabitants of Bayt Naqquba were known for their friendly relations with their Jewish neighbors in Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim.

Benny Morris Benny Morris ( he, בני מוריס; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. He is a member of t ...

writes: "It is possible that the inhabitants of Beit Naqquba had received ''both'' an order to evacuate from Arab military commanders in Ein Karim and "strong advice" to the same effect from Lisser and Navon. But it is likely that the "advice" given in the name of the

Harel Brigade Harel Brigade (, ''Hativat Harel'') is a reserve brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, today part of the Southern Command. It played a critical role in the 1948 Palestine war, also known as "Israel's War of Independence." It is one of the former ...

, which physically controlled the area, was more potent of the two factors in precipitating the evacuation."Morris, 1994, pp. 257-289 The village was taken around the 11 April 1948 during

. Khalidi, 1992, p. 278. Between 1948 and 1964 the inhabitants of Bayt Naqquba lived at

Sataf Sataf (Arabic: صطاف, Hebrew: סטף) was a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was located 10 km west of Jerusalem, with Sorek Valley (Arabic: Wadi as-Sarar) bordering to the ...

, "under trees, because the Arabs had not allowed them to come over their lines, out of distrust and revenge".Morris, 1994, p. 264 Afterwards they were allowed to stay temporarily in Abu Ghosh. In 1962, they established a new village, Ein Naqquba on some of their land south of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.

The village today

References

Bibliography

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