Welcome To Mansurat al-Khayt - منصورة الخيط (מנצורת אל-ח'יט)

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

Value

Occupation Date

January 18, 1948

Distance From District

11.5 (km) East of Safad

Elevation

200 (meters)

Before & After Nakba, Click Map For Details

Pre-Nakba Map showing before and after destruction

Map Location

See location #65 on the map

View from satellite

Acts of Terror

Massacre occured by Zionist troops against the town's inhabitants.

Exodus Cause

Military assault by Zionist troops

Village Temains

The village has been completely defaced

Ethnically Cleansing

Population was completely cleansed

Pre-Nakba
Land Ownership

Ethnic Group	Land Ownership (Dunums)*
Arab	0
Jewish	0
Public	6,735
**Total	6,735

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

Land Usage
As of 1945

Land Usage	Arab (Dunum)*
Planted W/ Cereal	5,042
Built up	17
Arable	5,042
Non-Arable	1,676

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Population

Year	Population*
1922	437
1931	267
1945	200
1948	232
Est. Refugees 1998	1,425

*Sourced from British Mandate's Village Statisitics

Number of Houses

Year	Number of Houses
1931	61
1948	61

Near By Towns

	Qabba'a ↑ (N)	al-Wayziyya ↗
al-Muntar, Khirbat ←	Mansurat al-Khayt	→ Golan Heights
↙ Fir'im	↓ al-Ja'una	↘ Rosh Pina

Town's Name Through History

The village was also known by Mansurat al-Hula to distinguish it from another village by the same name, al-Mansura, Safad

Shrines / Maqams

A shrine for a local sage known by al-Shaykh Mansur (for his namesake the village was named after him)

Nearby Wadies & Rivers

The village was situated 1 km west of the Jordan River

Exculsive Jewish Colonies
Who Usurped Village Lands

Kefar ha-Nasi' is nearby village lands

Village Before Nakba

The village was situated on the volcanic sill that formed the southern border of the al-Hula Plain. It was about 1 km west of the Jordan River, and was linked by a secondary road to the highway leading to Safad and Tiberias. The composite name of the village was probably derived from two sources: 'al-Khayt' from the region on the southwestern edge of Lake al-Hula, known as ard al-khayt, in which it was located (see Robinson 1841:341); and 'Mansura' after a Shaykh Mansur, who according to tradition had been buried there. It was also called Mansurat al-Hula, to distinguish it from another village by the same name, al-Mansura (see al-Mansura, Safad sub-district). The Arab geographer al-Dimashqi (d. 1327) wrote that the diyar (territories) of al-Khayt were located in the Jordan Valley and were similar to the land of Iraq because of their rice, birds, warm water, and agricultural crops. [Cited in D 6/2:171-72] Subsequently, the Syrian Sufi traveler al-Bakri al-Siddiqi, who visited the area in the mid-eighteenth century, related that he passed by al-Khayt with the judge of Safad. [Al-Rihla, cited in al-Khalidi 1968:67] Under the Mandate, Mansurat al-Khayt was a hamlet (so classified by the Palestine Index Gazetteer) whose entire population was Muslim. Agricultural production and animal husbandry were the mainstays of its economy.

Village Occupation and Ethnic Cleaning

The village first came under attack by the Haganah on 18 January 1948, well before widescale fighting had broken out. Israeli historian Benny Morris notes that it 'was temporarily evacuated during a Haganah retaliatory strike,' but he does not say what triggered the alleged retaliation. He also neglects to mention the number of casualties left by the raid and the date the villagers returned after their temporary exile. Another raid followed on the heels of the first one, on the night of 6-7 February. The New York Times reported: 'During the night fifty Jews made well-organized attacks on the Arab village of Mansurat el Kheit ... with automatic arms. They blew up a house under cover of heavy fire from automatic weapons .... ' One villager was reported wounded. An official British communique quoted in the Palestinian daily Filastin confirms this report. [F:2/2/48; M:56-57; NYT:8/2/48]

However, if any villagers left as a result of the attacks, they apparently returned soon afterwards, since Israel made a concerted effort to evict them from 1949 until 1956. In July 1949, the armistice agreement was signed between Israel and Syria, according to which the village fell in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the border. As such, its residents were protected by the agreement and could not be expelled. However, over the next several years Israel used a variety of methods to turn the villagers out of their homes, eventually succeeding in pushing them into Syria (see Kirad al-Baqqara, Safad sub-district). In the case of this and at least seven other villages in the DMZ, the reasons given for the proposed expulsions were 'military, economic and agricultural.'

Zionists Colonies on Village Lands

There are no Israeli settlements on village land. The settlement of Kefar ha-Nasi' (206264), founded in 1948, lies nearby to the west, on land belonging to the (still-existing) village of Tuba (206263).

Village Today

The site is partly wooded and partly overgrown with grass; no landmarks are visible. The surrounding land is farmed by the settlement of Kefar ha-Nasi'.

Source

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

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Display Name

Clan/Hamolah

Country of Residence

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