Najd, Gaza
Template:Infobox Former Arab villages in Palestine Najd (Arabic: نجد) was an Arab village in the British Mandate Palestine, located 14 kilometers northeast of Gaza City. Najd students attended school in the nearby village of Simsim. On 13 May 1948 it was occupied by Jewish soldiers from the Negev Brigade as part of Operation Barak.[1] The inhabitants were expelled and fled to Gaza, and the village was completely destroyed and leveled to the ground. In 1951 the town of Sderot was built over the village lands.
History
In 1596, Najd was part of the Ottoman Empire, nahiya (subdistrict) of Gaza under the liwa' (district) of Gaza with a population of 215. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and fruit, as well as on goats, beehives and vineyards.[2]
Edward Robinson, who travelled in the region in 1838, noted that Najd lay south of a wadi, and observed how the villagers were winnowing barley by throwing it into the air against the wind with wooden forks.[3]
In the late nineteenth century, Najd was a small village with a well and a pond.[4]
As the population grew during the Mandate period, the village expanded northwestward. The village population was Muslim, and the children attended school in Simsim, 2 km to the northeast. The villagers worked primarily in agriculture and animal husbandry. Fields of grain and fruit trees surrounded Najd on all sides. Fruit trees were concentrated on the north and northeastern side, where irrigation water was available from wells.[5]
In 1944/45 a total of 10 dunums were allocated to citrus and bananas, while 11,916 dunums were allocated to cereals. 511 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. The population was 620.[6]
1948 War and aftermath
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the villagers of Najd fled their homes to Gaza.
The village gained attention in 2002, when the first Qassam-rockets fired from the Gaza strip hit the Israeli town of Sderot.
References
- ^ Najd Palestine Remembered
- ^ Hütteroth, Wolf-Deiter and Kamal Abdulfattah (1977), Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. p. 144. Quoted in Khalidi, p. 128
- ^ Robinson (1841), p. 371. Also cited in Khalidi. p128.
- ^ Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener: The Survey of Western Palestine. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. (1881) III:260. Quoted in Khalidi, p.128
- ^ Khalidi, 1992, p.128
- ^ Khalidi, 1992, p.128
Bibliography
- Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, ISBN 0887282245
- Morris, Benny (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521009677
- Edward Robinson, Eli Smith (1841): Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838, Published by Crocker & Brewster. Volume 2.
External Link
- Welcome to Najd, palestineremembered.com