Al-Sanbariyya 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 ...

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 1, 1948, by Palmach's First Battalion under

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 31.5 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 ...

, near Wadi Hasibani.

History

North of the village, a column with an inscription mentioning the Roman

Emperor Julian Julian ( la, Flavius Claudius Julianus; grc-gre, Ἰουλιανός ; 331 – 26 June 363) was Roman emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek. His rejection of Christianity, and his promotion of Neoplaton ...

(331-363 C.E.) was found.Khalidi, 1992, p. 494 In 1875,

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (15 September 1821 – 21 Septembe 1890) was a French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included Greece, Asia Mino ...

traveled in the region, and noted that "debris of a small village" ... "is referred to me as ''Kharbet Sembezieh''". 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 it as "a few ruined Arab houses."

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 ...

, during the

British Mandate for Palestine The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. The manda ...

, the village had a population of 83; 77 Muslims and 6 Christians, in a total of 20 houses.Mills, 1932, p
110
/ref> חולה - בדואים ליד מעין-JNF034391

In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 130 Muslims, with a total land area of 2,532

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.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
71
Of this, 539 dunams were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 1,739 for cereals, while 6 dunams were classified as non-cultivable areas.

1948, aftermath

A complaint to

Mapam Mapam ( he, מַפָּ״ם, an acronym for , ) was a left-wing political party in Israel. The party is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party. History Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatz ...

said that “...I spoke to a number of members from

Ma'ayan Baruch Ma'ayan Baruch ( he, מַעְיַן בָּרוּךְ, ''lit.'' Blessed Spring) is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located near the intersection of the Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese border, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional C ...

and nearby

kibbutzim A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming ha ...

and I got the impression that there exists the possibility that there is a desire to destroy the villages and he Arabs'houses so that it will be impossible for the Arabs to return to them. A week ago a representative of the

JNF Jewish National Fund ( he, קֶרֶן קַיֶּימֶת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael'', previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, and subsequ ...

(possibly Yosef Nahmani) came to visit. He saw that in the village of al Sanbariya ...several houses were still standing, albeit without roofs. He told the secretariat of the kibbutz to destroy the houses immediately and he said openly that this will enable us to take the village's lands, because the Arabs won't be able to return there. I am sorry to say the kibbutz agreed immediately without thinking about what they were doing.“Morris, 2004, p.
357
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *

External links

al-Sanbariyya

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 ...

al-Sanbariyya
Villages of Palestine *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