Al-Nahr

al-Nahr
Named El Qahweh in Pierre Jacotin´s map from 1799
al-Nahr
Arabic	النهر
Name meaning	In 1881, the place was named Kahweh, meaning "the coffee shop"
Also spelled	an-Nahr
Subdistrict	Acre
Coordinates
Palestine grid	163/268
Area	5,261 dunams
Date of depopulation	21 May 1948
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Ben Ami, Kabri

al-Nahr (Arabic: النهر‎‎) was a Palestinian village 14 km northeast of Acre. It was depopulated in May 1948 after a military assault carried out by the Carmeli Brigade as part of the Israel Defense Forces's Operation Ben-Ami. Immediately after the assault the village of al-Nahr was razed.

History

The twin villages of Al-Nahr and nearby al-Tall were both sites of ancient settlements atop the tel of Kabri. Recent excavations indicate habitation back to the sixth millennium BC.

Ottoman era

In the Ottoman period, the village appeared under the name of El Qahweh in Pierre Jacotin´s map from 1799. In 1875, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village, which he called El Kahoueh. He found it to have 120 inhabitants, all Muslims. In 1881 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described the village, then named El Kahweh, as a "stone village, containing about 250 Moslems, [] situated on the plain, surrounded by figs, olives, mulberries, and pomegranates; there is a spring and flowing stream at this village."

British Mandate era

In villagers of Al-Nahr were Muslim, and lived principally of agriculture and animal husbandry. In 1944/45 it had a population of 610 Arabs, with 5,261 dunams of land. A total of 2,066 dunums was used for citrus and bananas, 1,094 dunums were allotted to cereals, 1,937 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, of which 30 dunums were planted in olive trees, while 28 dunams were built-up land.

1948 war and aftermath

See also: al-Kabri massacre

On March 27, 1948, hundreds of armed villagers and units of the Arab Liberation Army attacked a Jewish convoy near Kabri, killing forty-nine Jews. Six Arabs were also killed in the battle. Two months later the commander of Operation Ben-Ami gave operational orders given that day were to "attack with the aim of capturing, the villages of Kabri, Umm al Faraj and Al-Nahr, to kill the men [and] and to destroy and set fire to the villages." Benvenisti states that "the orders were carried out to the letter", while Morris writes that a number of villagers were apparently executed.

The Israeli kibbutz of Kabri makes use of village land. The settlement of Ben Ami, named after the fallen commander of an attack on nearby Nahariyya, was also established on the village land.

In 1992, the village site was described as "Only two houses remain, and one of them is partially destroyed. A tall date-palm tree grows on the village site, which is overgrown by wild grasses, a few cactuses, and fig trees. The cemetery, on the western side of the village contains one identifiable grave. The nearby Fawwara spring has been fenced in and declared private property."

See also

• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War

Bibliography

• Morris, Benny, (second edition 2004 third printing 2006) The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-00967-7

External links

• Welcome to al-Nahr
• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 3: IAA, Wikimedia commons
• Hussein Mubaraki: Because They Wanted the Land, WREMEA, May–June 2008