Zakariyya
Az-Zakariyya (Arabic: زكريا) was a Palestinian village in the Hebron Subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine, located in the western foothills of the Hebron Mountains near the road linking Bayt Jibrin to Jerusalem.[1] Although the village had been allotted to the Arab State in the 1947 United Nations proposed partition plan, the area was occupied by Israeli forces. The village was besieged in January 1948 and occupied by Israeli forces on 23 October 1948 during Operations Yoav and Ha-Har.[2] Unlike most villages captured in those operations, its inhabitants were not immediately expelled, though some left because of the fighting. All remaining residents were formally evicted on 9 June 1950, when the Israeli government also ordered the demolition of the village's houses.[3] The Israeli settlement of Zekharya was established on the village's land the same year. A mosque, its minaret, and a former village school building survive on the site. Descendants from its residents are currently scattered among different regions; from Ramla to refugee camps in the southern West Bank, to Jordan.[4][5]
Az-Zakariyya زكريا | |
|---|---|
| Etymology: Named for the prophet Zechariah (Zakariyya); the earlier Byzantine-period village on the site was called Caper Zacharia after his traditional tomb.[5][4] | |
| Geopolitical entity | Mandatory Palestine |
| Subdistrict | Hebron |
| Date of depopulation | Occupied 23 October 1948; population formally evicted 9 June 1950[4] |
| Population (1945) | |
| • Total | 1,180 |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Military assault (Haganah / Giv'ati Brigade), followed by a post-war expulsion order[4] |
| Current Localities | Zekharya[4] |
Etymology and early history
The site was known in the Byzantine period (330–638 CE) as Caper Zacharia, administered from nearby Bayt Jibrin, believed to be named after the prophet Zechariah[6] although the shrine of prophet Zechariah is located in Khirbet Beit Zakariya, several kilometres southeast. About a kilometre southwest of Zakariyya stands Tell Zakariyya (also refered to as Tel Azekah) which is generally identified with the biblical Azekah of the David and Goliath narrative (1 Samuel 17; Joshua 10:10).[2]
The oldest document naming individual villagers dates to 29 April 1309 CE, when the two village headman Farraj ibn Saed ibn Furayj and Nassar ibn Amara ibn Said of the al-Amir tribe, swore before the Jerusalem's Waqf administration to cultivate the village's land for the benefit of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque endowment - as part of a cache of approximately 1,000 Mamluk-era records rediscovered in Jerusalem's Islamic Museum in the 1970s. In the Ottoman tax register of 1596, Zakariyya appeared with a population of 259, paying taxes on wheat, barley, olives, goats and beehives.[1]
The village before 1948
By the late nineteenth century the village held a mosque, a shrine to Shaykh Hasan, a market, and an elementary school at its center, drawing water from two communal wells.[7] The 1931 census recorded 189 houses and 742 people; by 1944/1945 the population had gorwn to 1,180. In 1944/45, of 15,320 dunams village land, 6,523 were sown with cereals and 961 planted with orchards and irrigated crops (including 440 dunams of olives).[2]
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1948 war and depopulation
Even before the end of the British Mandate (May 1948), on 17-18 January 1948, a Haganah unit of roughly 100 men besieged Zakariyya together with neighbouring Dayr Aban and Bayt Nattif, described by the New York Times at that time as a "punitive expedition".[2] After the establishment of Israel, an Egyptian force crossed into the south and reached the districts of Hebron and later Bethlehem towards the end of May, establishing their presence also in Zakariyya.[8] After heavy artillery bombardment, the village was finally occupied on 23 October 1948, reportedly by the Giv'ati Brigade's Fourth Battalion, during the final stage of Operations Yoav and Ha-Har.[2] Residents were not fully displaced at that time, though some fled or fled temporarily and returned.[9] In March 1949, an Interior Ministy official noted that the village's many good houses could house several hundred new immigrants; in January 1950 Ben Gurion, Sharett, and JNF Official Yosef Weitz agreed to evict the population.[9]
Aftermath
The Israeli settlement of Zekharya was founded in 1950 directly on the depopulated village's land. Today, the mosque, its minaret, several original houses (some inhabited by Zekharya residents, other deserted) and the former school building remain present.[2] The expelled villagers scattered into different directions, some went on to live in Ramla, others in West Bank refugee camps such as Aqabat Jaber, Arroub and Deheishe, and beyond to Jordan. Some notable poets and writers are among the villagers descendants such as Ghassan Khalil Zaqtan[10] and Zuhayra Khalil Zaqtan.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wagstaff, J.M. (1978-07). "Historical geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the late 16th century". Journal of Historical Geography. 4 (3): 323. doi:10.1016/0305-7488(78)90293-1. ISSN 0305-7488. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 "Zakariyya — زَكَرِيّا". Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question – palquest. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
- ↑ "Zakariyya — زَكَرِيّا". Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question – palquest. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Zakariyya". Palquest – Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question. Institute for Palestine Studies / The Palestinian Museum. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Rapoport, Yossef. "How a 14th century document breathes life into a destroyed Palestinian village." +972 Magazine, 13 July 2020.
- ↑ "Zakariyya — زَكَرِيّا". Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question – palquest. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
- ↑ Besant, Walter (1881-01). "New Survey of Eastern Palestine". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 13 (1): 26–33. doi:10.1179/peq.1881.13.1.26. ISSN 0031-0328. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Katz, Kimberly (2019-02). "Hebron between Jordan and Egypt: an uncertain transition resulting from the 1948 Palestine War". Urban History. 46 (1): 132–148. doi:10.1017/S0963926818000032. ISSN 0963-9268. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ 9.0 9.1 Morris, Benny (2003-12-11). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81120-0. Search this book on
- ↑ "Fady Joudah on Ghassan Zaqtan - Asymptote". www.asymptotejournal.com. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
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