Der Rafat was situated on the western slope of a medium high mountain, 26 kilometer west of Jerusalem. The village was the site of a big monastery that belonged to the Latin Patriarchy. There was one mosque, Haj Hasan mosque, in the village. Der Rafat was at the end of the nineteenth century a small plantation on a top of a mountain as well as a spring at its western side.

On 1945, Der Rafat’s population was estimated 400 strong; one hundred of them were Christians, and the rest were Muslims.

Some 10,563 Donums (one Donum= 1000 sq. m) of the village’s land were cultivated and allocated for wheat’s growing mainly. Other 216 irrigatedDonums were cultivated as orchards. Three natural springs used to supply the village with water. Like most Palestinian villages, Der Rafat was rich in its archeological sites.

Der Rafat’s Occupation and Depopulation:

The village was stormed on July17-18, 1948 by Hariel’s Brigade during the second stage of the Israeli military operation coded Danny. According to “History of Independence” the village was occupied at the end of the operation when Israeli forces expanded Jerusalem’s passage toward the south.

Benny Morris, the Israeli historian, has indicated that the majority of the Arabs who remained in the vicinity of the village left the place as columns of Hariel’s brigade were approaching and the mortars’ shelling started. Those who remained were forced to leave, he added, but without elaborating on the happenings inside the village or the residents’ fate of the adjacent monastery.

The village was destroyed after the passage of three weeks, i.e. during the second truce of the war. Morris has come through his comment on the subject of destroying Arab villages at that period, saying: “ The army embarked gradually throughout the second truce, which lasted three months starting July 19 till mid-October, on the demolition of the deserted villages for military motives as usually described. Most of the villages in the middle of the country e.g. … were dynamited mid-September.”

The colony of Geva’at Shemish was built 1954 on the land of the village, exactly toward its western location.

A pile of ruins and some porches, which remained intact while the others were destroyed and mixed with the houses’ debris, today covers the site of the village. Cactus can be seen at the northern tip of the village. A statue of Mary the Virgin is rising above the façade of the monastery, two kilometers far from the village westward.

Bibliography:

– All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 byKhalidi, Walid

– Palestine Remembered.com