Dayr Rafat

This article is about the depopulated Palestinian village called Dayr Rafat. For the monastery located 2 km west of the site, see Deir Rafat.

Dayr Rafat
Arabic
District	Jerusalem
Population	430 (1945)
Area
Date of depopulation	July 18, 1948[1]
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Givat Shemesh[2]

Dayr Rafat was a Palestinian Arab village in the District of Jerusalem. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on July 18, 1948 by the Har'el Brigade, during the second stage of Operation Dani. It was located 26 km west of Jerusalem.

History

In the late nineteenth century, Dayr Rafat was described as a small hamlet situated on a ridge with a spring to the west.^[3]

In a 1931 British census, there were 218 Arabs living in Deir Rafat, rising to 430 in Sami Hadawi's 1945 land and population survey. Most of its inhabitants fled the village after its capture by the Har'el Brigade in Operation Dani during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The village was completely destroyed, except for the monastery. In 2006 it had a population of 81. Palestinian refugees from Deir Rafat and their descendants numbered 3,063 in 1998.^[4]

In 1945, the village had a population of 430. The village had a mosque named after al-Hajj Hasan and has three khirbas.

References

1. ^ Morris, 2004, p.xx, village #333. Also gives cause of depopulation.
2. ^ Khalidi, 1992, p. 287
3. ^ Conder and Kitchener: SWP III, 1881, p.13, Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 287
4. ^ Welcome To Dayr Rafat Palestine Remembered.

Bibliography

• Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener (1881): The Survey of Western Palestine: memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography, and archaeology. London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. vol 3
• Hadawi, Sami (1970), Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3150.html 
• 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 9780521009676. http://books.google.com/?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=benny+morris&q. 

External links

• Welcome To Dayr Rafat
• Dayr Rafat, from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
• Dayr Rafat, Palestine Family.net