This article is about the former village in Ramle Sub-district. For the former village in Hebron Sub-district, see Al-Qubayba, Hebron. For the Palestinian village in Jerusalem, see Al-Qubeiba, Jerusalem.
Al-Qubayba (Arabic: القبيبة) was a PalestinianArab village in the Ramle Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on May 27, 1948, by the Givati Brigade as part of the Second stage of Operation Barak. It was located 10.5 km southeast of Ramla near the Rubin River (or Wadi al-Sarar) which provided the village with water and irrigation for agriculture. Al-Qubayba was mostly destroyed with the exception of a few houses, and Kfar Gevirol was built in its place, now a suburb in the west of Rehovot.
In 1863, Victor Guérin found the village to contains four hundred and fifty inhabitants. The houses were grouped together on a hill, and surrounded by gardens planted with figs, olives, cucumbers, and tobacco.[8]
An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed Kubebe with a population of 499, in 210 houses, though the population count included men, only.[9][10]
In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Kubeibeh as "a moderately large village, principally of mud, with cactus hedges surrounding gardens, standing on high ground. There is a well in the gardens to the east, and another to the south of the village."[11]
In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 1,720 Muslims,[2] and the total land area was 10,737 dunams.[3] Of this, Arabs used 4,639 dunams for citrus and bananas, 1,143 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, 2,972 dunums were allocated to cereals,[14] while 43 dunams were classified as built-up urban areas.[15]
The village was depopulated by the Israeli army in 1948.[5] Houses that were not destroyed were soon occupied by Jewish immigrants. Over time it became a community called Kfar Gevirol, later incorporated into Rehovot as a neighborhood called Ibn Gevirol.[16] The mosque was converted into a synagogue which collapsed in the 1980s.[16]
The Israeli moshav of Ge'alya was also constructed on village land.[5]
In 1992 the village site was described: "The walls and rubble of collapsed houses intermingle with the buildings of the Israeli settlements that have been established on the site. A former pool is used as a garbage dump. Some houses remain. One house, occupied by Jewish residents, is of modest size and is made of masonry; the beams that support its flat roof protrude slightly from the masonry of the exterior walls. Another village house is now used as a restaurant. Part of the school, a long building with a rectangular door and windows, still stands. Cactus hedges and sycamore and palm trees grow on the southern edge of the site."[5]
