More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed –in its entirety or partially– by Zionist gangs as part of a
programmed plan of uprooting native Palestinians from their homeland, Palestine, and breaking new ground for a bizarre colonial project called Israel, which the days of its first stage were closing in on that awful year of 1948.
Few researchers, and historians, Palestinians and Israelis, have attempted to document this tragic chapter of al-Nakba (catastrophe). Among Palestinians were Aref El-Aref who prepared shortly in the aftermath of 1948 war a list of villages occupied and its Arab citizens were forced to leave in the course of battles. He published few years later a six-part volume about 1948 war under the title al-Nakba (1956-1960). The historian Mustafa Dabbagh published an eleven-part volume titled “Our Land Palestine” (1972-1986). A thorough description of the destroyed villages or otherwise was included in the book.
Other writers followed suit including the late Palestinian geographer Bashir Najm who coauthored with Engineer Bsharah Muammer comprehensive tables of statistics covering the people and the land.
On 1987, Abdul Jawad Saleh and Walid Mustafa published a booklet concerning the mass destruction of the Palestinian villages.
At last the Israeli historian Benny Morris published on 1989 his important book “ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949”.
All in all, 418 villages were destroyed, depopulated or simply taken over by Zionists for various purposes. Others were utilized as sites for building Zionist settlements.
In 1992 , the distinguished Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, author and editor of many valuable publications, books and researches, narrating the untold story and history of the Palestinians before and after their Nakba (catastrophe), a paramount referential research work titled “ All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948”. Its Arabic version appeared on November 1997.
In addition to these major works, a group of researchers prepared a list of names for destroyed villages — among them was Israel Shahak, president of Israeli Human Rights group who published on 1973 somehow modified text of Aref Al-Aref list.
Shahak based his work on Al-Aref list of 399 occupied villages, omitting from it the undestroyed villages—reducing the figure to 383 villages.
The Palestinian geographer Kamal Abdul Fattah classified on 1986 another list in preparation for the forthcoming list of Ber Zeit University.
But Christoph Uehlinger from the Swiss “Association for the reconstruction of Emmuas” village prepared a list based on Al-Aref-Shahak list, and to the preliminary list of Kamal Abdul Fattah (1983)—adapting it to the Israeli maps.
Although the Israeli authorities failed to issue a list of the destroyed villages, it republished on 1950s topographic maps –originally prepared by British Mandate –giving Hebrew names to the places printing over the destroyed villages the Hebrew word “Hrous” – meaning: destroyed.
Barring Dabbagh’s book (Our Land Palestine) and the Palestinian Encyclopedia, none of these works has referred to the destroyed village with more than a name and few statistics—merely as a single element amid general sight of destruction.
General Moshe Dayan stated in 1962:
We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish State, here. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books, not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahal arose in the place of Mahalul; Gevat in the place of Jibta; Sarid in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
Bibliography:
-All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 by Walid Khalidi
-The Catastrophe and the Lost Paradise by Aref al-Aref
