Al-Dirbashiyya ( ar, الدرباشية ) was a
Palestinian 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
1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Pa ...
on May 10, 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 20 km northeast of
Safad in the
Hula Valley, bordering Hula Lake.
Location
The village was located on the lower slopes of the Golan Heights near the border with
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
overlooking the
Hula Valley. The lands to the west of the village were mainly marshland, although there were a few palm trees, and wooded areas to the south.
A shrine named after a Muslim sage, named ''al-Samadi'', was located between the village and Hula Lake.
[Khalidi, 1992, pp. 446-447]
History
The Palestine Index Gazetteer classified the village as a
hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
and during the British Mandate the British built a police station.
[
The inhabitants mainly earned their living from the cultivation of vegetables.][
In the 1945 statistics ''Ed Darbashiya'' had a population of 310 Muslims,][ with a total of 2,883 ]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 ...
of land.[ Of this, they used 2,763 dunums for plantations and irrigable land, while 120 dunams were classified as non-uncultivable land.][Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p]
168
/ref>
Post 1948
In 1992 the village site was described: "The rubble of destroyed houses is scattered across the village site. The site also contains a segment of a cement-lined irrigation canal, and the remains of terraces in some fields. The village lands, which are used mainly as pastures, are covered with grass, cactus plants, and Christ’s-thorn and eucalyptus trees."[Khalidi, 1992, p. 447]
References
Bibliography
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External links
al-Dirbashiyya
Zochrot
al-Dirbashiyya
Villages of Palestine
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War
Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
District of Safad