Info

District: al-Quds (Jerusalem)

Population 1948: 390

Occupation date: 14/07/1948

Occupying unit: Har'el (palmah)

Jewish settlements on village/town land before 1948: None

Jewish settlements on village/town land after 1948: Tarum

Background:

Sar'a, was a Palestinian Arab village located 25 km west of Jerusalem, depopulated during the Nakba in 1948.

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sara'a had a population 205, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 271, in 65 houses.

In 1945 the population of Saris was 340, who owned 4,967 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. Of the land, 194 dunams were plantations and irrigable land and 2,979 were for cereals, while 16 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

Sar'a was captured by Israel's Harel Brigade on July 13–14, 1948, during Operation Dani in 1948. Many of the inhabitants had already expelled, as the village had been on the front lines since April. Those who had remained expelled when the mortar barrages from the approaching Harel columns began; the few that stayed throughout the assault were later expelled. The village's inhabitants fled the village towards various West Bank refugee camps, including Qalandiya.

The Israeli settlement of Tarum was established on the north-eastern part of village land in 1950, while Tzora was established about 2 km southwest of the site, on land belonging to Dayr Aban.

According to the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, the village remaining structures on the village land were in 1992:

Stone rubble and iron girders are strewn among the trees on the site. A flat stone, surrounded by debris and inscribed with Arabic verses from the Qur'an, bears the date A.H. 1355 (1936). On the western edge of the site stands a shrine containing the tombs of two local religious teachers. A valley to the northeast is covered with fig, almond, and cypress trees.

Images

Others

Publications

List of destroyed Palestinian villages on which JNF sites were erected 09/2006

Locality events

Tour at the destroyed Palestinian village of Sar‛a following the film

Tour at the destroyed Palestinian village of Sar’a

Locality tours

Tour at the destroyed Palestinian village of Sar’a