Below is a list of villages depopulated or destroyed during the Arab–Israeli conflict.
1880–1946
Arab villages
A number of these villages, those in the Jezreel Valley, were inhabited by tenants of land which was sold by a variety of owners, some local and others absentee landlord families, such as the Karkabi, Tueini, Farah and Khuri families and Sursock family of Lebanon. In some cases land was sold directly by local fellahim (peasant owners).[1] The sale of land to Jewish organizations meant that tenant farmers were displaced.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
List of Palestinian villages from which tenant farmers were uprooted before 1948, with the cause of the uprooting (i.e., sale by landlord or some other cause) given along with the name of Jewish settlements on newly acquired land (in parentheses) can be seen below.
Safed district
al-Mutila, 1896 (Metula) Land, 12,800 dunams, sold under Ottoman law by landlord, a Christian from Sidon named Jabur Bey, to Baron de Rothschild's chief officer Joshua Ossovetski. Druze villagers displaced.[8][9]
Malhamiyah, 1902 According to Edward Said, the Jewish farming village of Menahemia) was established in 1902 on land purchased by the Jewish Colonization Association in 1901; 3,000 dunams were purchased directly from local fellahim, 700 dunhams from local landlords, and over 60,000 dunams from landlords in Beirut; the Sursuq, Tuenis, and Mudawwar families. The Arab tenant farmers were evicted by Ottoman authorities.[1]
Zamarin (Zikhron Ya'akov), 1948[29] – Following Jewish settlement in 1882,[30] Arabs continued to live and work in the community alongside Jews.[31][32][33]
Sheikh Bureik Sold during the early 1920s, by the Sursuk family to the Jewish National Fund.[35] The Arab tenants were evicted and in 1925 an agricultural settlement also named Sheikh Abreik was established there by the Hapoel HaMizrachi, a Zionist political party.[36]
Palestinian Arab residents were expelled from hundreds of towns and villages by the Israel Defense Forces, or fled in fear as the Israeli army advanced.[citation needed] Around 400 Arab towns and villages were depopulated.
Jewish villages
The main Jewish areas depopulated in 1948 were the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion. Approximately 30-40km2 of land was owned by Jews in the areas which became the West Bank and Gaza Strip (approximately 6,000km2); some of this land was uninhabited.[43]
Many of these areas were repopulated after the Six-Day War.
Six-Day War
West Bank
Three Arab villages, Bayt Nuba, Imwas and Yalo, located in the Latrun Corridor were destroyed on the orders of Yitzhak Rabin due to the corridor's strategic location and route to Jerusalem and because of the residents' alleged aiding of Egyptian commandos in their attack on the city of Lod. The residents of the three villages were offered compensation but were not allowed to return.[45]
Over 100,000 Golan Heights residents were evacuated from about 25 villages whether on orders of the Syrian government or through fear of an attack by the Israeli Defense Forces and expulsion after the ceasefire.[47] During the following months, more than a hundred Syrian villages were destroyed by Israel.[48]
As a part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, 21 civilian Israeli settlements were forcibly evacuated, as well as an area in the northern West Bank containing four Israeli villages. The residential buildings were razed by Israel but public structures were left intact. The religious structures not removed by Israel were later destroyed by Palestinians.
Israeli settlements
In the Gaza Strip (all 21 settlements, as well as 1 Bedouin village):
On 5 November 2020, Israeli bulldozers demolished most of the village of Khirbet Humsa al-Fawqa and forced 73 of its Palestinian residents, including 41 children to leave in what was the largest demolition in years.[54] On 4 February 2021, Israel razed for the second time because of what it claimed was an illegal settlement next to a military firing range.[55] On 7 July 2021, it was demolished by Israel again for at least the third time.[56]
In May 2023, the Israeli army destroyed the village of Ein Samiya, forcibly expelling 170 people.[57]
^Barbara Jean Smith, The Roots of Separatism in Palestine: British Economic Policy, 1920–1929, Syracuse University Press, 1993 pp.96–97;
^Mark A. Tessler, A History of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, Indiana University Press, 1994 p.177, writes 'The Sursock deal is known to have involved the eviction of about 8000 tenants "compensated" at three pounds ten shillings [about $17] a head.'
^Palestine Commission on the Disturbances of August 1929, H.M.S.O., 1930, vol.1 p.437:'The Sursock titles should have been looked into as was acknowledged by the government officials themselves.The transfer became an irregular one, if not an illegal one, because the peasants' claims were not satisfied.'
^Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine, vol.2 (Une mission sacrée de civilisation), Fayard, Paris, 2002 pp.143–148.
^Benny Morris, Righteous Victims. First Vintage 2001 edition, p55.
^Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Haifa, p. 34
^Glazer, Steven (Summer 1980). "The Palestinian Exodus in 1948". Journal of Palestine Studies. 9 (4). doi:10.2307/2536126. JSTOR2536126. Zionist efforts to convince the Arab population of Haifa and Zichron Ya'akov to stay were also made, in this case because Arab labour was seen as vital to maintaining the economies of these places.
^Hadar, Alizia Rachel; Kaufman, Aubrey (1963). The Princess Elnasari. Heinemann. p. 146.
^Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 1882-1914. Cambridge University Press.
^Eyal Benvenisti and Eyal Zamir. “Private Claims to Property Rights in the Future Israeli-Palestinian Settlement” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 89, no. 2, 1995, pp. 298: "All in all, between thirty and forty square kilometers of land and several hundred buildings (primarily in the West Bank) owned by Israelis were located in the territories occupied by Jordan and Egypt. [Footnote: Some of the Jewish-owned lands in these areas were not inhabited, but most were. Some of the inhabitants had been forced to leave their property during the turbulence of the 1920s and 1930s, and most of them (several thousand, mainly from the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion settlements south of Jerusalem) were displaced in the 1948 war. Yet, unlike the Palestinian refugees, these Jewish refugees were rehabilitated and resettled with the help of the Israeli authorities, which prevented the creation of a permanent problem.]"
