Welcome To Kawkaba - كوكبا (כוכבא)

District of Gaza Ethnically cleansed days ago	العربية Google Earth
	Gallery (5)

Statistic & Fact

Value

Occupation Date

May 12, 1948

Distance From District

25 (km) North East of Gaza

Elevation

100 (meters)

Before & After Nakba, Click Map For Details

Pre-Nakba Map showing before and after destruction

Pre-Nakba Aerial View

Map Location

See location #32 on the map

View from satellite

Military Operation

Operation Yo'av

Exodus Cause

Influence of fall of, or exoduce from, neighboring town

Village Temains

The village has been completely defaced

Ethnically Cleansing

Kawkaba inhabitants were completely ethnically cleansed.

Pre-Nakba
Land Ownership

Ethnic Group	Land Ownership (Dunums)*
Arab	8,386
Jewish	0
Public	156
**Total	8,542

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

Land Usage
As of 1945

Land Usage	Arab (Dunum)*
Irrigated & Plantation	166
Planted W/ Cereal	8,169
Built up	40
Arable	8,335
Non-Arable	167

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Population

Year	Population*
1596	88
1922	439
1931	522
1945	680
1948	789
Est. Refugees 1998	4,844

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Number of Houses

Year	Number of Houses
1931	121
1948	182

Near By Towns

al-Majdal Asqalan ↖	Julis ↑ (N)	'Iraq Suwaydan ↗
al-Jiyya ←	Kawkaba	→ al-Faluja
↙ Bayt Tima	↓ Hulayqat	↘ Beersheba Bedouins

Town's Name Through History

The Crusades referred to the village by Coquebel

Schools

Kawkaba shared its elementary school with the nearby villages of Bayt Tima and Hulayqat

Exculsive Jewish Colonies
Who Usurped Village Lands

Kokhav Mikha'el

Village Before Nakba

The village was situated on an uneven stretch of red-brown soil on the southern coastal plain. It lay on a highway constructed by the British during World War II, which paralleled and fed the coastal highway and passed through Gaza and Julis. The site was known during the Crusades as Coquebel. In 1596 Kawkab, a site identified with Kawkaba, was a village with 88 people. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, sesame, fruit trees, and vineyards.

The modem village was built around the middle of the nineteenth century on the site of a khirba that bore the same name. In the late 1800s, the village of Kawkaba had a rectangular layout along the above-mentioned road, and expanded north-south alongside it; it had a well to the west and a pool to the north. Kawkaba shared an elementary school with the villages of Bayt Tima and Hulayqat. Its houses were made of adobe and cement, and its shops were located at the village center, on the western side of the road. On its eastern lands were two water sources: a spring and a 70-m-deep well. The inhabitants of Kawkaba, who were Muslims, engaged in rainfed agriculture, cultivating grain and winter and summer vegetables. Toward the end of the Mandate they also cultivated fruits, such as figs and grapes, on all their lands except those to the west. In 1944/45 a total of 8,166 dunums was allotted to cereals; 166 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.

Kawkaba contained an archeological site with a pool, cisterns, the foundations of buildings, columns, and severed capitals. North of it was Khirbat Kamas, which was identified with the Crusader Camsa and which yielded some archaeological artifacts.

Village Occupation and Ethnic Cleaning

Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that the villagers fled westwards to Gaza on 13 May 1948, as a result of the destruction of the nearby village of Burayr, which was carried out during Operation Barak . But some inhabitants seem to have remained in Kawkaba, for the History of the Haganah claims that the villagers left in October 1948, during Operation Yoav.

The war reached Kawkaba well before these events, however. The Palestinian newspaper Filastin reported that a clash took place on 11 January on the road outside the village. The clash erupted when an armed Jewish convoy was attacked by Arab fighters, who lost one man in the two-hour skirmish.

An Egyptian account complements the Israeli versions of Kawkaba's occupation, claiming that the village was first occupied by Israel on 14 June 1948, in violation of the first truce of the war. Egyptian author Muhammad Abd al-Mun'im writes that the villagers were expelled at this time. Relying on Egyptian official records, he adds that Kawkaba was recaptured on 8 July by the Egyptian Second Infantry Battalion, with the help of a Saudi company, just as the first truce was ending. It apparently remained in Arab hands until the end of the second truce, on 18–19 October. The New York Times reported that, on 20 October, the Israeli army announced the capture of Kawkaba, along with Bayt Tima and Hulayqat. Thus, the village changed hands no less than three times in the course of the war, and the inhabitants were probably displaced in stages.

Zionists Colonies on Village Lands

The settlement of Kokhav Mikha'el was founded in 1950 on village lands, southeast of the village site.

Village Today

The site is overgrown with sycamore and Christ's-thorn trees. The old road, as well as crumbled walls and debris in a wooded part of the site are clearly visible. The land in the vicinity is cultivated by Israeli farmers.

Source

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

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

Pre-Nakba Aerial view of the village / صورة من الجو للقرية اخذت قبل النكبة

Nakba Oral History Interview with Salaheddin Issa

Display Name	Clan/Hamolah	Country of Residence
Ameer Saleh	صالح	Dearborn Michigan, United States
لؤي عيسى	عيسى	السويد
عمر مصلح	مصلح	-
Mahmoud Hussein	-	Amman, Jordan
om mohamed	الحاج	قطاع غزة, فلسطين
Mahmoud	Abdell-Hady	Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
hani	-	-
محمد عبد الهادي	-	الرياض
عبد الهادي	-	العليا, العليا
rawan Hussein	-	-
Israa Hussein	Hussein	Al Ain, UAE
Mohammed Hussein	Hussein	Al-Ain, U.A.E
Rana Hussein	Hussein	Dubai, UAE
محمود	الحاج	غزة, فلسطين
أحمد أبوريا	-	-
Majd A. Al-Haj	الحاج	Gaza, Nusirat, Palestine
انس عبدالسلام	الحاج	السعودية
عبدالمعطي القاضي	-	الرياض, السعودية
محمد الحاج	الحاج	-
kamal hussein	hussein	riyadh , Saudia arabia
محمد سليمان عبد القادر	الحاج	الشارقة, الإمارت
سامي	عبيد	-

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