Zochrot - Bayt Nabala

Bayt Nabala

Info

District: Ramla

Population 1948: 2680

Occupation date: 12/07/1948

Jewish settlements on village/town land before 1948: None

Jewish settlements on village/town land after 1948: Beit Nehemia, Kfar Truman

Background:

In 1596, Bayt Nabala was part of the Ottoman Empire, nahiya (subdistrict) of Ramla under the Liwa of Gaza, with a population of 297. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, olives, fruit, as well as on goats, beehives and a press that was used for processing either olives or grapes. It had 54 Muslim families.

In 1870 Victor Guérin visited.In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Bayt Nabala as being of moderate size, situated at the edge of a plain.

The school was founded in 1921 and had about 230 students in 1946-47.

In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Bait Nabala had a population of 1,324; 1,321 Muslims and 3 Christians,[8] increasing in the 1931 census to 1758, all Muslims, in a total of 471 houses.

In 1944/45 the village had a population of 2,310. A total of 226 dunums of village land was used for citrus and bananas, 10,197 dunums were used for cereals, and 1,733 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.

Benny Morris writes that the village residents abandoned it on Arab orders on 13 May 1948. However, according to Walid Khalidi, this cannot be confirmed.

The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the village site in 1992: "The site is overgrown with grass, thorny bushes, and cypress and fig trees. It lies on the east side of the settlement of Beyt Nechemya, due east of the road from the Lod (Lydda) airport. On its fringes are the remains of quarries and crumbled houses. Sections of walls from the houses still stand. The surrounding land is cultivated by the Israeli settlements.