Al-Rihaniyya 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 Haifa Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on 30 April 1948 as part of the battle of Mishmar HaEmek. It was located 25 km southeast of

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

and 3 km northwest of Wadi al-Mileh.

History

In 1882, the PEF's ''

Survey of Western Palestine The PEF Survey of Palestine was a series of surveys carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) between 1872 and 1877 for the completed Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) and in 1880 for the soon abandoned Survey of Eastern Palestine. The ...

'' described ''Kh. Rihaneh'' as a village containing the remnants of watch-towers and two springs. A population list from about 1887 showed that ''Rihaneh'' had about 190 inhabitants; all

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 ...

s. Al-Rihaniyya had an elementary school for boys founded in 1888 that was no longer open during the British Mandate period.

British Mandate era

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 British Mandate authorities, Al Rehaniyeh had a population of 266

s, increasing in the 1931 census to 293 Muslim, in a total of 55 houses. In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 240 Muslims, and the village's lands spanned 1,930

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s. Of this, 1,761 dunums of land were used for

cereal A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize ( Corn). Edible grains from other plant families, ...

s; 73 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, while 46 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

1948, aftermath

On 5 April 1948, after the Battle of Mishmar HaEmek the

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 ...

ordered the

Golani Brigade The 1st "Golani" Brigade (, ''Hativat Golani'') is an Israeli military infantry brigade. It is subordinated to the 36th Division and traditionally associated with the Northern Command. It is one of the five infantry brigades of the regular Is ...

to inform the residents four Arab villages including Rihaniya that they should leave for safety reasons.Morris, 2004, p. 241 On 14 April,

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

reported that Al-Rihaniyya was occupied, together with Daliyat al Ruha and Al-Butaymat. However Khalidi believes that the actual depopulation only happened two weeks later, during Passover Clearing. Surviving villagers told Rosemarie Esber that they decided to leave Al-Rihaniyya on 30 April, as "we did not have guns to defend it". They took refugee in Umm az-Zinat, but when the Haganah attacked it (according to the villagers: unprovoked) they fled "with nothing but our clothes on", to Ijzim. They stayed at Ijzim for several months, until it also was attacked by Zionist forces, who "kicked everybody out". Esbers informants ended up in

Umm al-Fahm Umm al-Fahm ( , ''Umm al-Faḥm''; ''Um el-Faḥem'') is a city located northwest of Jenin in the Haifa District of Israel. In its population was , nearly all of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel. The city is situated on the Umm al-Fahm ...

.Esber, 2008 , p
261
/ref> 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 ...

, with the village's lands taken over by

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 ...

Ramat HaShofet and the

moshav A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 1 ...

of Ein HaEmek. According to Khalidi's description in 1992, the village site was strewn with housing rubble, bushes and thorns. The village cemetery and a

well A well is an excavation or structure created on the earth by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...

were visible at the bottom of a hill to the north. The surrounding land was farmed and an avocado orchard lay to the south.Khalidi, 1992, p. 186

References

Bibliography

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External links

Welcome To al-Rihaniyyaal-Rihaniyya

Zochrot Zochrot (; "Remembering"; ; "Memories") is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2002. Based in Tel Aviv, its aim is to promote awareness of the Nakba, including the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. The group was co-founded by Eitan ...

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 8
IAA Wikimedia commons
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War District of Haifa