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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 irrigated Donums 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.
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