Al-Butayha () was a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

village in the Safad Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 4, 1948, by the

Palmach The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Phalanges/Companies") was the elite combined strike forces and sayeret unit of the Haganah, the paramilitary organization of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of th ...

's First Battalion during Operation Matateh. It was located 13 km southeast of

Safad Safed (), also known as Tzfat (), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of up to , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel. Safed has been identified with (), a fortified town in the Upper Gal ...

, quarter of a mile east of the

Jordan River The Jordan River or River Jordan (, ''Nahr al-ʾUrdunn''; , ''Nəhar hayYardēn''), also known as ''Nahr Al-Sharieat'' (), is a endorheic river in the Levant that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and drains to the Dead ...

, a little northeast of the northern tip of the

Sea of Galilee The Sea of Galilee (, Judeo-Aramaic languages, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ), also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth ...

. Many of the inhabitants were forced into

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

History

Al-Butayha was located close the

n border. The name means "marshland" in Arabic, in reference to the vast stretch of land in the area. In 1459 the village was visited by the Arab geographer

al-Qalqashandi Shihāb al-Dīn Abū 'l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad ‘Abd Allāh al-Fazārī al-Shāfiʿī better known by the epithet al-Qalqashandī (; 1355 or 1356 – 1418), was a medieval Arab Egyptian encyclopedist, polymath and mathemati ...

British Mandate era

It was classified as a hamlet by the Palestine Index Gazetteer. In the 1944/45 statistics the village was counted with Arab al-Shamalina, and together they had 650

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

inhabitants, with a land area of 16,690 dunums,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
69
Department of Statistics, 1945, p
9
/ref> with 3,842 dunums allocated to cereal farming, 238 dunums under irrigation or used for orchards, while 12,610 dunams were classified as non-cultivable land.

1948, and aftermath

On May 4, 1948, the village was attacked by

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

s during Operation Matateh ('Operation Broom'), part of Operation Yiftach. Their orders were to "destroy any points of assembly for invading forces from the east”. The

's first Battalion, in addition to units from the Alexandroni Brigade and local

troops, started with firing mortar rounds against the villages, then proceeded to burn down them down. A report stated they "blew up most of the houses and burned the tents of Kedar", between

Tabgha Tabgha (, ''al-Tabigha''; , ''Ein Sheva'' which means "spring of seven") is an area situated on the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel and a depopulated Palestinian village. It is traditionally accepted as the place of the feedi ...

and Buheita. Some 15 Arabs were killed, and the rest fled to Syria.Morris, 2004, p
250
/ref> According to Israeli historian

Benny Morris Benny Morris (; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. Morris was initially associated with the ...

, Operation Matateh resulted in 2000 Arabs all fleeing across the border to Syria.

Today

The village was razed in 1948. Some of the cultivated trees such as olives and palms still grow among the ruined houses. Today the village lands are occupied by the settlement of Almagor, which was established in 1961. A popular picnicking spot, Park ha-Yarden ("Jordan River Park"), is 200 metres south of the site.

References

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

Welcome To al-Butayhaal-Butayha
Zochrot
Butayha
Villages of Palestine *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 6:
IAAWikimedia commons
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War District of Safad Sea of Galilee