Dayr Rafat

This article is about the Palestinian village. For the monastery located 2 km west of the site, see Deir Rafat.
Dayr Rafat
Name meaning from personal name[1]
Subdistrict Jerusalem
Palestine grid 146/131
Population 430 (1945)
Date of depopulation July 18, 1948[2]
Cause(s) of depopulation Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities Givat Shemesh[3]

Dayr Rafat was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict. It was located 26 km west of Jerusalem. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by the Harel Brigade.

History

In the late nineteenth century, Dayr Rafat was described as a small hamlet situated on a ridge with a spring to the west.[4] In a 1931 British census, there were 218 Arabs living in Dayr Rafat, rising to 430 in Sami Hadawi's 1945 land and population survey. The village had a mosque named for al-Hajj Hasan and three khirbas.

1948 Arab–Israeli War

Dayr Rafat, along with four other villages, were overtaken by the Israeli Harel Brigade on 17–18 July 1948 in Operation Dani. The villages had been on the front line since April 1948 and most of the inhabitants of these villages had already left the area. Many of those who stayed fled when Israeli forces attacked and the few who remained at each village were expelled.[5]

References

  1. Palmer, 1881, p. 324
  2. Morris, 2004, p. xx, village #333. Also gives cause of depopulation.
  3. Khalidi, 1992, p. 287
  4. Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p. 13, Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 287
  5. Morris, 2004, p. 436

Bibliography

External links

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