Al-Hamidiyya
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Al-Hamidiyya (), 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 ...
village in the District of Baysan. It was depopulated by the Jewish militias, precursors of the
Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...
, during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 12, 1948. It was located five kilometres north of Baysan. It was attacked as part of Operation Gideon. The population in 1922 was 193, expanding to 255 in 1948.


History

The village takes its name from the sultan of the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
,
Abdul Hamid II Abdulhamid II or Abdul Hamid II (; ; 21 September 184210 February 1918) was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1876 to 1909, and the last sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a Decline and modernizati ...
(1876–1909). In 1908, the Ottoman government confiscated lands privately owned by the sultan, including in the Baysan area, and leased them to tenants already residing there, possibly previously settled on his estates by the sultan. Some of the tenants were Bedouins and some fellaheen (peasants), with the former usually calling their village "Arab al-..." followed by the tribal name, which is not the case with Hamidiyya, which can mean that they were of fellah stock. Fellaheen would rather name their village after its founder, or after the location it had been built on.


British Mandate period

In the
1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divis ...
, conducted by the Mandatory Palestine authorities, ''Hamidiyeh'' had a population of 193; 1 Roman Catholic Christian and 192 Muslims, decreasing slightly in the 1931 census to 157, all Muslims, in 42 houses. In the 1945 statistics the village was counted together with the Jewish kibbutz of Hermonim, with 220 Muslim Arab inhabitants in Al-Hamidiyya, and 100 Jewish inhabitants in Hermonim. Together they had a total area of 10,902 dunums, where Arabs owned 4,720 dunums of land as compared to 1,386 (about 13%) of the total land owned by the Jewish inhabitants. Of this land, Arabs used 164 dunams for citrus and bananas, 8 for irrigation and plantation, 4,395 for cereals, while 10 dunams were built–up, Arab land.


1948 War and aftermath

According to
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 ...
, kibbutzniks demanded-and often themselves carried out-the destruction of neighbouring villages for local (and selfish) reasons, as a means of blocking the return of the Arab villagers. For this reason a veteran local leader, Nahum Hurwitz of Kfar Gil'adi appealed in a letter in September 1948 for permission to destroy al-Bira, Kawkab al-Hawa, Jabbul, and al-Hamidiyya in the area for fear that they may be used by Arabs for military operations and to enable them to "take the village's lands, because the Arabs won't be able to return there".Morris, 2004, p
357
Quotes from Peterzil to Erem, Bentov, Hazan and Cisling (August 10, 1948) quoting an extract from an undated letter from Faivel Cohen of Ma'ayan Barukh, to Peterzil. HHA-ACP 10.95.10(5) therein.
Following the war the area was incorporated into the
State of Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, described the village remaining structures in 1992 as: "Aside from the ruins of the village's houses (which have been reduced to cement rubble), a cemetery, and a few wells, only thorns are found on the site. The lands in the vicinity are used by Israelis for agriculture and grazing."Khalidi, 1992, p. 50
Kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...
Chamadya, 2 km south, is close, but not on village land.


References


Bibliography

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External links


Welcome To al-Hamidiyyaal-Hamidiyya
Zochrot *Survey of Western Palestine, map 9
IAAWikimedia commons
from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center {{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War