Welcome To al-Tira - الطيرة الزعبية (المرج) (א-טירה)

District of Baysan Ethnically cleansed days ago	العربية Google Earth
	Gallery (37)

Statistic & Fact

Value

Occupation Date

April 15, 1948

Distance From District

17.5 (km) North of Baysan

Elevation

125 (meters)

Before & After Nakba, Click Map For Details

Pre-Nakba Map showing before and after destruction

Map Location

See location #2 on the map

View from satellite

Exodus Cause

Haganah 'Wispering' campaign (psychological warfare)

Village Temains

al-Tira was completely destroyed and defaced.

Ethnically Cleansing

On 26th of March 1948, the village 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	4,463
Jewish	2,604
Public	3,140
**Total	10,207

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

Land Usage
As of 1945

Land Usage	Arab (Dunum)*	Jewish (Dunum)*
Irrigated & Plantation	56	0
Planted W/ Cereal	4,624	2,603
Built up	29	1
Arable	4,680	2,603
Non-Arable	2,894	0

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Population

Year	Population*
1922	130
1931	108
1945	200 (50 Jewish)
1948	174 (50 Jewish)
Est. Refugees 1998	1,069

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Number of Houses

Year	Number of Houses
1931	24
1948	38

Near By Towns

	Ma'dhar ↑ (N)	'Awlam ↗
Kafr Misr ←	al-Tira	→ Sirin
↙ Tamra	↓ al-Taiyiba	↘ Danna

Shrines / Maqams

A shrine for a local sage known as al-Shaykh Dhiyab.

Nearby Wadies & Rivers

The village overlooks Wadi al-Bira.

Water Supply

'Ayn al-Bayda was the main source of drinking water for al-Tira inhabitants.

Archeological Sites

al-Tira has a khirba which contains ancient ruins, inhabited caves and cisterns.

Exculsive Jewish Colonies
Who Usurped Village Lands

Kibbutz Gazit, Kefar Qish, & Ma'dharare

Village Before Nakba

The village stood on the side of a gently sloping hill and overlooked the steep slopes of Wadi al-Bira, to the north and northeast, and flat areas to the west and southwest. A secondary road linked it to a highway that led to Samakh in the north and Baysan in the south. Similar roads and dirt paths also connected it to neighboring villages, as well as to the spring of Ayn al-Bayda, which was the inhabitants' main water source. A shrine (maqam) for a local religious figure, Shaykh Dhiyab, lay to the south of the village. The people of al-Tira were Muslims, and earned their livelihood chiefly from agriculture. In 1944/45 a total of 4,326 dunums was allocated to cereals; 56 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Khirbat al-Tira lay to the south of the village and, when excavated, revealed ancient ruins, including caves and cisterns.

Village Occupation and Ethnic Cleaning

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) decided to expel the people of al-Tira as early as 26 March 1948, when it organized a series of expulsions around the country in the weeks before the major military operations were launched. Israeli historian Benny Morris describes a meeting of JNF officials in which the director of the Lands Department, Yosef Weitz, argued that the inhabitants of al-Tira and nearby Qumya 'must be forced to leave' because they were 'not taking upon themselves the responsibility of preventing the infiltration of irregulars [i.e. Palestinian guerrillas].' But the decision was not implemented for almost three weeks. On 15 April the village was emptied 'after receiving 'friendly advice' from the Haganah,' according to Morris. (Morris also writes, inconsistently, that the villagers 'were ordered to leave by Arab irregular forces' over one month later, on 20 May.)

Zionists Colonies on Village Lands

The settlement of Irgun Borokhov, founded in 1943, was close to the village site. On 10 September 1948, it was taken over by a different settler organization and renamed Kibbutz Gazit , and in late 1948 it absorbed the village of al-Tira. Gazit is 1.5 km southwest of the village site, on village land. Another settlement, Kefar Qish , was founded in 1946 on the lands of Ma'dhar, in Tiberias sub-disctrict. It is about 1 km northwest of the site of al-Tira.

Village Today

The ruins of stone houses, covered with grass and thorns, are all that remain of al-Tira. The site is fenced in and serves Israeli farmers as pasture land. Cypress trees grow on surrounding land.

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
بنت الوطن	-	-
eyad	قريص	-
سيرين محمد علي زعبي	-	-
أحفاد عبد الله يونس	الناطور	اربد, JORDAN
edimido	natour	Irbid, Jordan
Ahmad Al-Natour	Al Natour	-
Mahmoud Qreis	Qurreis	-

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