Kabara
كبارة
| |
|---|---|
Village
| |
| Etymology: Kebârah, Kebâra, from personal name[1] | |
A series of historical maps of the area around Kabara, Haifa (click the buttons)
| |
  Kabara Location within Mandatory Palestine | |
| Coordinates: 32°32′56″N 34°55′14″E / 32.54889°N 34.92056°E / 32.54889; 34.92056 | |
| Palestine grid | 144/217 |
| Geopolitical entity | Mandatory Palestine |
| Subdistrict | Haifa |
| Date of depopulation | April 30, 1948 |
| Population
(1945)
| |
| • Total | 120[2][3] |
| Current Localities | Ma'ayan Tzvi,[4] Ma'agan Michael,[4][5] Beit Hanania[4] |
Kabara was a Palestinian Arab village in the Haifa Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on April 30, 1948. It was located 30 km southeast of Haifa.
A cave in the vicinity contains artifacts from the Middle Palaeolithic and Natufian periods.[4]
The PEF's Survey of Western Palestine visited in 1873, and noted about Kebarah: "Traces of ruins exist here: a cave, and a tomb with nine kokim, and an ante-chamber and entrance of masonry, with a circular arch of small stones. Near this ruin the wall or dam, built to prevent the spreading north- wards of the marsh surrounding the Zerka, will be found marked on the Sheet, ending in a knoll on the east. The masonry resembles that in the aqueducts at Cæsarea; the stones vary in length, averaging about 2 feet, and are set in cement. The wall is about 4 feet thick, with two rows of ashlar, and thoroughbonds, being built in alternate headers and stretchers. The core of the wall is of rubble."[6]
Early in the mandate, a government concession was granted to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) to develop the area. A long-running legal dispute between the Palestinian inhabitants of the area, the Mandatory government, and PICA, continued through the period of the mandate.[7]
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kabara had a population of 73 Muslims.[8] In the 1931 census it was counted with Jisr az-Zarqa, together they had a population of 572 Muslims, in a total of 117 houses.[9]
In 1938 the kibbutzofMa'ayan Tzvi was established on what traditionally had been village land.[4]
In the 1945 statistics it had a population of 120 Muslims,[2] with a total of 9,831 dunams of which Muslims owned 1,070, Jews 3,487 and 5,247 was public land.[3] Of the land, Arabs used 2 dunams for citrus and bananas, 20 for plantations and irrigable land, 1,001 dunums (247 acres) for cereals,[10] while a total of 2,437 dunams was classified as non-cultivable land.[11]
According to Walid Khalidi no information is given about how the village became depopulated, but he assumes it was during the second campaign to "clear" the coastal areas of Arabs, that is, in late April, or early May, 1948.[4] Following the war, the area was incorporated into the State of Israel; Ma'agan Michael was established in 1949 and Beit Hanania in 1950, both on village land.[4]
In 1992 the village site was described: "The rubble from the village houses has been moved up the slope where it is now visible, covered with dirt. Cactuses and banana trees, as well as isolated fig, carob, and olive trees grow on the site."[4]
The struggle is a good example of the complexity of the relations among the British, the Zionists, and the Palestinian Arabs when it came to land. Shamir provides us with the helpful theoretical tool of "dual colonialism," emphasizing that Jewish colonization worked effectively within the British colonial framework based, among other things, on mutual interests of modernization and development. In the case of Zor al-Zarqa and Barrat Qisarya, a concession was awarded to a Jewish colonizing body to "improve" and "develop" a large territory inhabited by semi-sedentary Arabs, under the auspices of the Mandate government... Jewish colonization-related operations moved forward in the area during the Mandate. The PJCA drained the Kabbara marshes during the 1920s and forested parts of Barrat Qisarya (even though the project never appeared in official documents as a state concession), and two new settlements were established on the periphery of the area: Ma'ayan Tzvi in 1938 (adjacent to Zikhron Yaa'akov) and Sedot Yam in 1940 (just south of the town of Qisarya).
