Qaytiyya was a

Palestinian Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

village in the Safad Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the

1948 War The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence ( he, מלחמת העצמאות, ''Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut'') and ...

on May 19, 1948, by the Palmach's First Battalion of

Operation Yiftach Operation Yiftach ( he, מבצע יפתח, ''Mivtza Yiftah'') was a Palmach offensive carried out between 28 April and 23 May 1948. The objectives were to capture Safed and to secure the eastern Galilee before the British Mandate ended on 14 May ...

. It was located 28 km northeast of

Safad Safed (known in Hebrew as Tzfat; Sephardic Hebrew & Modern Hebrew: צְפַת ''Tsfat'', Ashkenazi Hebrew: ''Tzfas'', Biblical Hebrew: ''Ṣǝp̄aṯ''; ar, صفد, ''Ṣafad''), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevat ...

, bordering both the Hasibani and the Dan Rivers.

History

In 1881, the PEF's ''

Survey of Western Palestine The PEF Survey of Palestine was a series of surveys carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) between 1872 and 1877 for the Survey of Western Palestine and in 1880 for the Survey of Eastern Palestine. The survey was carried out after the ...

'' (SWP) described ''El Keitîyeh'', while under Ottoman rule, as a village of 80 Muslims built of

adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

and surrounded by streams: occupied during spring and harvest. bordering both the Hasibani and the Dan Rivers.

British Mandate era

In the

1931 census of Palestine The 1931 census of Palestine was the second census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate for Palestine. It was carried out on 18 November 1931 under the direction of Major E. Mills after the 1922 census of Palestine. * Census of P ...

, under of the British Mandate in Palestine, Qeitiya had a population of 824 Muslims, in a total of 163 houses.Mills, 1932, p
109
/ref> In the 1945 statistics, ''Qeitiya'' had a population of 940 Muslims, and the total land area was 5,390

dunums 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 ...

. Of this, 19 dunums were for citrus and bananas, 4,465 for plantations and irrigable land, 44 for

cereal A cereal is any Poaceae, grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, Cereal germ, germ, and bran. Cereal Grain, grain crops are grown in greater quantit ...

s, while 93 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
170
/ref>

1992, aftermath

In 1992 the village site was described: "Only a few stones from the old village are still visible. The surrounding land is cultivated, except for a small section that contains stone rubble and is overgrown with thorny plants and eucalyptus trees."

References

Bibliography

* * * * * *(Morris, 2004, pp
251

511
- 512,
539
*

External links

Qaytiyya

Zochrot Zochrot ( he, זוכרות; "Remembering"; ar, ذاكرات; "Memories") is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2002. Based in Tel Aviv, its aim is to promote awareness of the Palestinian ''Nakba'' ("Catastrophe"), including the 1948 Pa ...

Qaytiyya
dr Ritz *Survey of Western Palestine, map 2
IAAWikimedia commons
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War District of Safad