Khirbat Iribbin

Khirbat Iribbin
Khirbat Iribbin
Arabic	خربة عربي
Also Spelled	Iribbin, Khirbat
Sub-district	Acre
Coordinates	33°04′50.24″N 35°13′40.56″E
Population	360 (1945)
Area	11,463 dunums
Date of depopulation	October 31, 1948
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Adamit, Goren

Khirbat Iribbin (Arabic: خربة عربي‎), or Khurbet 'Arubbin, (meaning "The ruin of Arubbin"), is a former Palestinian village in the Upper Galilee, located 23 km (14 mi) northeast of the city of Acre. In 1945 it had a built-up land area of over 2,000 dunums and a population of 360 Muslim Arabs.

Location

The village was located on the north bank of Wadi Karkara, about 1 km south of the Lebanese border, and with a view to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.

History

In the 19th century, Victor Guérin inspected the place, where he found the remains of a chapel, two cisterns, and foundations of houses.

In 1944/45 the village, (including Arab al-Aramisha, Jurdayh, and Khirbat Idmith) had a population of 360. A total of 2,637 dunums of village land were used for cereals, and 16 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.

1948 and Aftermath

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War it was captured by Israel's Oded Brigade on October 31, 1948 during Operation Hiram.

The Israeli settlement of Goren, founded 1950, close to village land, is south of the village site. Adamit was founded in 1958 on village land, to the west of the village site. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the village site in 1992: "The site is covered with the debris of houses. It also has a number of wells and caves. The remains of animal shelters are located about 1 km (1 mi) away, and about 4 km (2 mi) to the east is the rubble of houses used by the Arab al-Qulaytat."

Petersen inspected the place in 1991, and found that the remains of the village consisted of several widely spaced rectangular houses, one storey high. Most houses were made of rough field stones laid dry, but with traces of older coursed masonry in places. The roofs were flat, made of earth on top of short branches, resting on transverse arches.

See also

• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• List of villages depopulated during the Arab-Israeli conflict

Bibliography

• 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 1
• Guérin, M. V.: (1868–1880): Description Géographique, Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine,
• 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), Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00967-7
• Palmer, E. H. (1881): The survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English name lists collected during the survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and explained by E.H. Palmer.
• Petersen, Andrew (2002), A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine: Volume I (British Academy Monographs in Archaeology), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-727011-0, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0197270115
• Pringle, Denys (1993), The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A-K (excluding Acre and Jerusalem), Cambridge University Press, http://books.google.ca/books?id=BgQ6AAAAIAAJ p.250 -251
• Pringle, Denys (1997), Secular buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: an archaeological Gazetter, Cambridge University Press, http://books.google.ca/books?id=-_NbE5obqRMC p.51

External links

• Welcome To 'Iribbin, Khirbat
• Irbbin Khirbat, from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center