Welcome To Qumya - قوميه (קומיה)

District of Baysan Ethnically cleansed days ago	العربية Google Earth
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Statistic & Fact

Value

Occupation Date

March 26, 1948

Distance From District

12.5 (km) Northwest of Baysan

Elevation

75 (meters)

Before & After Nakba, Click Map For Details

Pre-Nakba Map showing before and after destruction

Map Location

See location #11 on the map

View from satellite

Military Operation

Operation Gideon

Attacking Units

Golani Brigade

Exodus Cause

Fear of Jewish attack, or of being caught in the fighting

Village Temains

The village was completely destroyed and only the village schools remain standing.

Ethnically Cleansing

On March 26th, 1948, Qumya was ethnically cleansed based on the orders of Yosef Weitz (a Jewish National Fund official). Weitz wrote in his diary about the inhabitants of Qumya and al-Tira in the Baysan valley:
Not taking upon themselves the responsibility of preventing the infiltration of irregulars .... They must be forced to leave their villages until peace comes.

Pre-Nakba
Land Ownership

Ethnic Group	Land Ownership (Dunums)*
Arab	4,716
Jewish	81
Public	101
**Total	4,898

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics
**Town Lands' Demarcation Maps

Land Usage
As of 1945

Land Usage	Arab (Dunum)*	Jewish (Dunum)*
Irrigated & Plantation	33	0
Planted W/ Cereal	4,205	81
Built up	15	0
Arable	4,238	81
Non-Arable	564	0

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Population

Year	Population*
1922	405
1931	386
1945	440
1948	510
Est. Refugees 1998	3,134

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Number of Houses

Year	Number of Houses
1931	88
1948	116

Near By Towns

al-Dahi ↖	Na'ura ↑ (N)	al-Taiyiba ↗
Zir'in ←	Qumya	→ al-Murassas
↙ al-Mazar	↓ Faqqu'a	↘ al-Sakhina

Schools

One schools which is still standing, but iy needs serious renovation guys!

Archeological Sites

The village contains Khirbat Qumya, and 'Ayn Jalud, an archaeological site where Roman milestones were found.

Exculsive Jewish Colonies
Who Usurped Village Lands

'En Charod and Geva'

Village Before Nakba

The village stood on a hilltop. Together with the village of Shatta, it was considered the western gate to the plain of Baysan. The Baysan-Haifa highway passed on the outskirts of the village. In 1596, Qumya fell within the administrative jurisdiction of the liwa' of Lajjun and was a farm that paid taxes to the Ottoman government. In the late nineteenth century, the village of Qumya was located on a knoll in the middle of a valley, surrounded by gardens of prickly pear. The village houses, built of adobe bricks, were densely clustered together on the hilltop, while vegetable gardens were planted on the lower slopes around the hill. It had one elementary school for boys. In 1944/45 a total of 4,205 dunums was allocated to cereals; 33 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Qumya was well known for its archaeological sites, including Khirbat Qumya, which contained rectangular understructures, caves, and rock-hewn cisterns. There was evidence that the village site had also been inhabited in earlier times; the ruins of a rectangular building, architectural fragments, and bossed stones were found on the site. About 800 m south of Qumya was Ayn Jalud, an archaeological site where Roman milestones and a large pool cut in the rock were found.

Village Occupation and Ethnic Cleaning

In the months before the outbreak of wide-scale fighting, nonmilitary Zionist organizations managed to arrange the expulsion of Palestinian communities from a number of villages. The Jewish National Fund (JNF), and particularly the director of its Lands Department, Yosef Weitz, took an active role in this effort. According to historian Benny Morris, Weitz met with other JNF officials on 26 March 1948 and called for the expulsion of the inhabitants of Qumya (along with those of al-Tira, a few km to the northeast). The reason he gave was that they were 'not taking upon themselves the responsibility of preventing the infiltration of irregulars [i.e. Arab guerrillas],' adding that, 'They must be forced to leave their village until peace comes.' According to Morris, by sheer coincidence, most of the inhabitants of Qumya left on their own initiative on the very same day. He writes that they left 'out of fear of Jewish attack and out of a sense of vulnerability as well as economic pressures. They were not ordered to leave by their Jewish neighbours, but there may have been 'friendly advice' to this effect.' Morris does not mention the nature of the 'economic pressures' that were applied but does say that the villagers were evacuated on British army trucks. A few days later, Weitz wrote to his superior that Qumya had been depopulated, commenting that, 'There is a tendency among our neighbours... to leave their villages.' A dozen men who stayed behind to guard the village were subsequently evicted.

Four months later, in late July, a neighboring settlement, Kibbutz 'En Charod, applied for permission from the Israeli Agriculture Center to seize the land of Qumya. Morris does not make clear whether the appropriation was approved.

Zionists Colonies on Village Lands

Zionists established the settlement of En Charod on what was traditionally village land in 1921, south of the village site. In the early 1950s En Charod was divided into two independent settlements, each affiliated with a different wing of the settlement movement: En Charod-Ichud, and En Charod-Me'uchad. The former is on the land of Qumya, but the latter is on the land of the still existing Arab village of Tamra. Geva', also established in 1921, is about 2 km west of the village site but is not on village land.

Village Today

The whole site is fenced in. Almond, mulberry, and pomegranate trees and cactuses grow around the rubble that dots the village site. Cypress trees grow among the ruins of the village school. The Israeli settlements of Tel Yosef, En Charod-Ichud, and En Charod-Me'uchad cultivate the land south of the village, while Geva' cultivates the land to the west.

Source

Dr. Walid al-Khalidi, 1992: All That Remains.

Want to browse more? 80,000 pictures were grouped in these gallaries:

Display Name	Clan/Hamolah	Country of Residence
أيمن عيادي	-	-
MOna	-	-
MUTAZ ABU ALHASAN	-	uk, uk
احمد بن بيلا	ابوالحسن	دمشق, قومية
Ahmad Abdulwahab Nemer AL-Khatib	الخطيب	الرياض, الرياض
أبو عبدالوهاب	الخطيب	السعودية, السعودية
Mahmoud Al-Khatib	Al-Khatib	Irbid, Jordan
hazem khateeb	-	amman, jordan
أيمن عيادي	Ayadi	Amman, Jordan
RAFIQ	abu el hassan	kuwait, kuwait
malsayed	Al sayyed Ahmad	-
saabneh	صعابنة	اربد, اربد
محمود أبو الحسن	أبو الحسن	ـ ـ ـ, الأردن

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