Subbarin was a
Palestinian Arab village located 28 kilometers south of
Haifa
Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...
. It was depopulated and destroyed during the
1948 Palestine war
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the Stat ...
as part of the
1948 Palestinian expulsion and the
Nakba
The Nakba () is the ethnic cleansing; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their s ...
.
History
Late Ottoman period
In 1859 Subbarin had about 600 inhabitants, who cultivated 55
faddans (1 faddan =100-250
dunums) of land.
[Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p]
43
/ref>
The French explorer Victor Guérin
Victor Guérin (; 15 September 1821 – 21 September 1890) was a French people, French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included ...
visited the village in 1870, and noted that the villagers cultivated sesame
Sesame (; ''Sesamum indicum'') is a plant in the genus '' Sesamum'', also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for ...
. A well
A well is an excavation or structure created on the earth by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
, called Bir Sabbarin, appeared well built. The village had an estimated 1000 inhabitants, with homes constructed of stones or adobe
Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) 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 use ...
.
In the 1882, the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' described Sabbarin as a "large" village, situated on a slope. The well was said to be the head of the Caesarea aqueduct. The oval well was 15 feet diameter and 15 feet deep.
A population list from about 1887 showed that Subbarin had about 1,160 inhabitants; all Muslim
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
s.
British Mandate period
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 divis ...
, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sabbarin had a population of 845; 833 Muslim
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
s and 12 Christian, where the Christians were all Roman Catholics. The population had increased in the 1931 census to 1,108; 18 Christians and the rest Muslim, in a total of 256 houses.
In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 1,700; 1,670 Muslims and 30 Christians[ and the village's lands spanned 25,307 ]dunam
A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...
s. 12,773 dunums of land used for cereal
A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize ( Corn). Edible grains from other plant families, ...
s; 45 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards,[Khalidi, 1992, p.187] while 179 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
1948 war and destruction
Sabbarin was captured by Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
i forces on May 12, 1948, during the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine in Operation Coastal Clearing. It was defended by a local militia and possibly the Arab Liberation Army. According to Benny Morris
Benny Morris (; 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. Morris was initially associated with the ...
, the Irgun
The Irgun (), officially the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, often abbreviated as Etzel or IZL (), was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of th ...
(IZL) encountered resistance there and the majority of the villagers fled after 20 of them were killed in a firefight, with an IZL armoured car firing on the villagers as they fled. More than one hundred people who had not fled, including the elderly, women, and children, were held behind barbed wire for a few days before being expelled to nearby Umm al-Fahm
Umm al-Fahm ( , ''Umm al-Faḥm''; ''Um el-Faḥem'') is a city located northwest of Jenin in the Haifa District of Israel. In its population was , nearly all of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel. The city is situated on the Umm al-Fahm ...
. Others who had fled earlier ended up in refugee camps in the Jenin
Jenin ( ; , ) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and is the capital of the Jenin Governorate. It is a hub for the surrounding towns. Jenin came under Israeli occupied territories, Israeli occupation in 1967, and was put under the administra ...
area.[
Historian Saleh Abdel Jawad writes that a massacre was committed by the Irgun in the village on 12-14 May.
Following the war the area was incorporated into the ]State of Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
. Kibbutz
A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...
Ramot Menashe was established northeast of the site in 1948, and Moshav
A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 1 ...
Amikam was founded in 1950, 1 km south of the village site.[
Khalidi described the remains of the village in 1992: ]''The large site, strewn with the stone debris of houses, is overgrown with wild thorns. The thorns are interspersed with cactus
A cactus (: cacti, cactuses, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae (), a family of the order Caryophyllales comprising about 127 genera with some 1,750 known species. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, ...
es and pine
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae.
''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...
, fig, olive
The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'' ("European olive"), is a species of Subtropics, subtropical evergreen tree in the Family (biology), family Oleaceae. Originating in Anatolia, Asia Minor, it is abundant throughout the Mediterranean ...
and mulberry trees. Some of the surrounding lands are used by Israelis as pasture and growing fruit trees.''
Sabbarin is among the Palestinian villages for which commemorative Marches of Return have taken place, such as those organized by the Association for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced.
Families from Sabbarin
From Palestineremembered.com.[Sabbarin]
Palestineremembered.com
# Hamidi (Arabic: حميدي)
# Al-Abhari (Arabic: العبهري )
# Al-Abdallah (Arabic: ال عبدالله )
# Al-Hajj Mahmud (Arabic: الحج محمود )
# Al-De'emeh (Arabic: الدعمة )
# Abu Libdi (Arabic: ابو لبده )
# Ghnima (Arabic: غنيمه )
# Hatab (Arabic: حطاب )
# Al-Samada'a (Arabic: الصمادعة )
# Abu Diab (Arabic: ابو ذياب)
# Al Mallah (Arabic: الملاح)
# Al-Hmedih
# Al-Masri (Arabic: المصري)
# Abu Kabir
# Abu Sammen (Arabic: أبو سمن )
# Faraj (Arabic: فرج )
File:ביקור נימוסין יהודי בכפר סוברין-ZKlugerPhotos-00132fn-907170685121057.jpg, Villager of Sabbarin in 1940
File:ביקור נימוסין יהודי בכפר סוברין-ZKlugerPhotos-00132fn-907170685121058.jpg, Villager of Sabbarin in 1940
File:ביקור נימוסין יהודי בכפר סוברין-ZKlugerPhotos-00132fo-907170685121151.jpg, Villager of Sabbarin in 1940
References
Bibliography
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External links
Sabbarin
Zochrot
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 8
IAA
Wikimedia commons
at Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
Mey Kedem
archaeological site in Moshav Amikam centered on a Roman water tunnel starting at Ein Tzabarin Springs
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War
District of Haifa
Arab villages depopulated prior to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War