Qumya
| Qumya | |
 Qumya
|
|
| Arabic | قوميه |
| Also Spelled | Kumieh, Qumiya |
| Sub-district | Baysan |
| Coordinates | 32°33′54.42″N 35°23′44.89″E / 32.5651167°N 35.3958028°ECoordinates: 32°33′54.42″N 35°23′44.89″E / 32.5651167°N 35.3958028°E |
| Population | 510 (1948) |
| Area | 4,898 dunums
4.9 km² |
| Date of depopulation | 26 March 1948[1] |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Fear of being caught up in the fighting |
| Current localities | Ein Harod (Ihud), Ein Harod (Meuhad), Geva |
Qumya (Arabic: قوميه) was a Palestinian village of 510 inhabitants when it was depopulated prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.[2]
Located 12.5 kilometers north of Baysan, the village was assaulted by the forces of the Golani Brigade on 26 March 1948 during Operation Gideon, on the orders of Yosef Weitz, a representative of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Its inhabitants fled in fear of being caught in the fighting.
Contents |
[edit] Location
The village was located 12.5 kilometers northwest of Baysan, on a hilltop. Together with the village of Shatta, it was considered the western gate to the plain of Baysan.[3]
[edit] History
Qumya was well known for its archaeological sites, including Khirbat Qumya which contained rectangular structures, caves, and rock-hewn cisterns. About 800 meters south of the village was ´Ayn ´Jalud, an archaeological site where Roman artifacts, including milestones and a large pool cut in the rock, have been found.[3]
By 1596, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Qumya was a farm under the administrative jurisdiction of Sanjak Lajjun.[3]
In the late nineteenth century, the village of Qumya was described as located on a knoll in the middle of a valley, surrounded by gardens of prickly pear.[4]
At the time of the 1931 census, Qumya had 88 occupied houses and a population of 386 Muslims.[5]
The village had one elementary school for boys. In 1944/45 a total of 4,205 dunums were used for cereals and 33 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.[3]
[edit] 1948, and after
In his diary, Weitz wrote of the inhabitants of Qumya and al-Tira in the Bisan valley thus:
"Not taking upon themselves the responsibility of preventing the infiltration of irregulars ... They must be forced to leave their villages until peace comes.[2]
Meron Benvenisti noted that the JNF guided military operations to evacuate and expropriate the land of Palestinian villages in 1948, including that of Qumya. In writing of the capture and evacuation of Qumya and Endur (the biblical Endor), he wrote that, "The Jews were particularly interested in the village of Qumya, which was entirely surrounded by JNF land..."[6][7]
The Jewish settlements of Ein Harod and Geva were built of the village lands.[2]
Kibbutz Bet ha-Shittah and the Gush Nuris settlements were given thousands of dunams of refugee land from Qumya and the neighbouring villages of al-Murassas, Kafra, Yubla, and Zir'in by the Histadrut's Agicrultural Center in July and October 1948.[8]
Walid Khalidi described the remaining village structures, noting:
"The whole site is fenced in. Almond, mulberry, and pomegranate trees and cactuses grow around the rubble that dots the village site. Cypress trees grow among the ruins of the village school."[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Morris, 2004, p.xvii village #120. Also gives cause of depopulstion
- ^ a b c Welcome to Qumya, Palestine Remembered, http://www.palestineremembered.com/Baysan/Qumya/index.html, retrieved 2007-12-03
- ^ a b c d Khalidi, 1992, p. 57
- ^ Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener: The Survey of Western Palestine. London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1881, II, p.85. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 57
- ^ E. Mills, ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas. Jerusalem: Government of Palestine. p. 79.
- ^ Benvenisti, 2000, p.132
- ^ Financing Racism and Apartheid:Jewish National Fund's Violation of International and Domestic Law, Palestine Land Society, August 2005, http://www.plands.org/JNF%20Report1.pdf, retrieved 2007-12-03
- ^ Fischbach, 2003, p. 13.
- ^ Khalidi, 1992, p.58.
[edit] Bibliography
- Benvenisti, Meron (2000), Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-23422-2, http://books.google.com/?id=7itq6zYtSJwC
- Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener (1881): The Survey of Western Palestine: memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography, and archaeology. London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. vol 2
- Fischbach, Michael R (2003). Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12978-5
- Hadawi, Sami (1970), Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3150.html
- Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, ISBN 0-88728-224-5
- Morris, Benny (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00967-7, 9780521009676, http://books.google.com/?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=RA1-PA217&dq=kheiriya
