Al-Dirbashiyya

Al-Dirbashiyya (Arabic: الدرباشية) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Safad Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 10, 1948 by the Palmach's First Battalion of Operation Yiftach. It was located 20 km northeast of Safad in the Hula Valley, bordering Hula Lake.

In 1945 it had a population of 310 people. The village contained a notable shrine for a local sage known as al-Samadi.

History

The village was located on the lower slopes of the Golan Heights near the border with Syria overlooking the Hula Valley. The lands to the west of the village were mainly marshland, although there were a few palm trees, and wooded areas to the south. The Palestine Index Gazetteer classified the village as a hamlet but during the British Mandate the British built a police station. A shrine named after a Muslim sage, named al-Samadi, was located between the village and Hula Lake. The inhabitants were engaged mainly in the cultivation of vegetables and in 1944/45 a total of 2,763 dunums was irrigated or used for orchards.

Bibliography

• Hadawi, Sami (1970), Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center
• Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, ISBN 0-88728-224-5
• Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6.