List of Villages Depopulated During the Arab–Israeli Conflict

This article concerns village examples associated principally with the War of Independence and its immediate aftermath, not a definitive register of every locality that became depopulated. The sources include villages, towns, cities, and localities whose residents left at different times; some sources extend through 1950 or, in broader mapping projects, to 1967. Consequently, a name appearing in a source does not by itself establish that it belongs in a strictly village-only list or that it was depopulated during the same phase as other examples.[7][8]

The terminology is important. Sources describe places as abandoned, emptied, depopulated, occupied, destroyed, or subject to the displacement of residents.[3][9] A population may leave a locality whose buildings remain standing, as at Lifta, while a village may be destroyed after its residents leave. The terms are therefore not interchangeable, and a source’s label should not be taken to establish the precise sequence or cause of departure.[10][9]

The sources provide competing totals rather than a single reconciled count. Figures range from more than 350 villages to more than 400 towns and villages.[1][9] Other counts include cities, partial urban areas, encampments, or localities covered by a broader period.[5][8] Some works catalogued as village registers are described as containing 418 entries, but the available catalog descriptions do not reproduce those entries for comparison.[2] The lists and examples below accordingly identify named localities while distinguishing what the cited material actually says about each.

One account places the beginning of substantial movement in the period after the United Nations partition vote of November 29, 1947. The Center for Israel Education estimates that 200,000–300,000 Arabs left Palestine between November 1947 and April 1948, before a much larger exodus followed April. Its discussion lists several contributing conditions: the direct effects of war, the breakdown of law and order, loss of employment, panic amid reports of atrocities, Palestinians’ efforts to protect themselves and their families, and an asserted intent among Israeli leaders to limit the Arab population in a Jewish state.[4]

The Library of Congress study presents the underlying explanations as sharply opposed. It reports that Palestinian refugees said they were driven out by Jewish forces, while the Israeli government’s account was that Arab forces urged residents to leave temporarily. The study says these accounts remained diametrically opposed decades after the events. It estimates that 700,000–900,000 Arabs lived before the war in the area eventually enclosed by the 1949 Armistice line and says about 170,000 Arabs remained in Israel when the fighting stopped.[5]

Other accounts stress that experiences differed by locality and date. Britannica describes residents as having been driven out by Zionist forces before May 15, 1948, by the Israeli army after that date, or having fled for fear of violence.[3] A Center for Israel Education chapter gives approximately 700,000 Arab refugees by the July 1949 armistice with Syria, while the Library of Congress study reports about 750,000 Palestinian Arabs living in refugee camps by summer 1949. Those estimates are not identical in wording or scope and should not be treated as directly equivalent.[4][5]

Historical work cited in the sources examines national and local decision-making among both Jewish and Arab actors, the Israeli decision to bar refugee repatriation, and the subsequent fate of abandoned villages, lands, and urban neighborhoods.[6] A separate National Library of Israel record describes a contemporaneous migration report about the first six months of the war; it says a 2019 investigation by Akevot and Haaretz uncovered official suppression of documents and places the report within disputes over archives and historical narratives.[11]

A Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center article identifies seven Shi’ite villages whose residents left during the War of Independence: Malkiya, Kadas, Nabi Yusha, Hunin, Saliha, Tarbikha, and Abeil el-Qamh. It says that in 1932 about 3,000 Shi’ite residents lived in the area: six villages were predominantly Shi’ite, while Shi’ites made up half of Abeil el-Qamh’s population. The report places their abandonment between April and November 1948 and describes a combination of residents leaving on their own initiative, fear of the IDF or of being caught in fighting, and IDF security considerations. It also says the villages had been used as bases by supporters of the Mufti and Fawzi al-Qawuqji’s Arab Salvation Army, that residents became refugees in Lebanon, and that new towns and villages were later founded on the land.[12]

Lifta, on Jerusalem’s western outskirts, is identified by Britannica as one of the first Arab towns depopulated, in January 1948.[1] Another account describes families beginning to leave on December 4, 1947, after a decision to evacuate women and children, followed by fighting and attacks. It says Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni ordered women, children, and elderly residents to evacuate in January, and that the village was abandoned by its irregular militia by early February. After the war, 60 of its 410 homes remained, along with the mosque, an olive press, and a path to a spring.[10]

Lifta’s strategic position on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is noted in the same account. A Jerusalem Post report describes the village as a battleground after the partition vote and says residents began leaving while families posted guards to protect property; the guards also fled after the April 9 attack on nearby Deir Yassin. The article gives a reported population of 2,548 and recounts attacks and casualties at Lifta and nearby Sheikh Badr, attributing details to historians and historical accounts. The figure of 2,548 is a population estimate, whereas the other account’s figure of 410 refers to houses, so the two figures are not conflicting measures.[13]

Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem, is among the most discussed examples. Britannica describes about 750 inhabitants in roughly 150 stone houses and says Irgun and Lehi forces attacked and destroyed the village on April 9, 1948, killing about 100 people. It says the attack spread fear in the region, with many Palestinians fearing that their villages would suffer the same fate.[14] A textbook passage reproduced in an IMPACT-se review instead describes a village of about 600 people, gives a casualty range of 100 to 254, and says the attack took place during Operation Nakhshon. That review emphasizes uncertainty around the casualty count and notes that accounts remain contentious.[15]

Tantura is another case for which the sources provide accounts of displacement and subsequent transformation. A scholarly abstract states that Jewish forces occupied the village on May 23, 1948, and expelled its residents; another describes occupation on May 22–23, the arrest of men, and the expulsion of the rest of the population to Fureidis, followed by a further expulsion to Jordan and the establishment of Kibbutz Nahsholim.[16][17] A separate textbook passage reproduced in an IMPACT-se review says surviving residents were expelled and structures destroyed, but gives no more precise date.[18] The scholarly account traces changes to houses, lanes, a school, and the shoreline using aerial photographs from 1946, 1952, 1957, 1966, and 1976.[16]

Bayt Mahsir is described as a large village controlling the road to Jerusalem. A Ynet historical account says the Harel Brigade captured it in May 1948 during Operation Maccabi, after three attempts; its occupation helped open the Burma Road and resume supplies to besieged Jerusalem. The account says the village houses were demolished and identifies Beit Meir as now located in the area.[19]

Maalul, described as an Arab Christian village in the Jezreel Valley, had 390 residents and 90 dwellings in a British census reported by Mako. A 1945 survey put its land at about 4,700 dunams, of which approximately 2,000 were not Jewish-owned. Mako says the village was captured in July 1948 and its houses demolished, with religious buildings excepted; two churches, a mosque, and a spring remained.[20]

The account of Maalul also illustrates conflicting reports at the level of a single locality. A descendant, Ali Salah, said that Irgun and Haganah forces took control of water sources, leaving the village without water for livestock and agriculture for 21 days; he said nearly 97 percent of residents left for nearby Yafi'a on July 15, believing they would return after a few days. Salah also said five elderly residents who stayed behind were killed when houses were blown up two days later. Local heritage guide Amir Moran offered a conflicting account: he said residents fled to Yafi'a after seeing events elsewhere and that he knew of no documentation of a massacre or details of the village’s capture. The report presents these as contrasting accounts rather than resolving them.[20]

The list of examples can also include places where the available source gives only a label or partial description. A reference glossary calls Beit Jiz and Beit Sussin abandoned Arab villages near Latrun on the Burma Road, and describes Kartiya as an abandoned Arab village in the south near the Egyptian-occupied belt separating the Negev from the rest of Israel. It supplies no dates or reasons for their abandonment. Similarly, the glossary describes Majdal as an Arab town abandoned in 1948, near which Migdal Ashkelon was established in the 1950s; Majdal is relevant to the boundaries of a village-only list, but is a town rather than a village.[21]

The sources also name Qumiya in the Jezreel Valley as an example of a two-stage departure: women and children left before the men. The account attributes to historian Benny Morris a broader claim that the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of several dozen villages and the removal of dependents from dozens more between April and July 1948. It also describes Faluja, where about 3,000 Arabs were evacuated after hostilities had ceased, and records a contemporary report that residents might have stayed had they received advice after the Israeli-Egyptian armistice. That departure therefore differs in timing from wartime village evacuations.[22]

Some named places are towns or cities rather than villages. The Library of Congress study describes Jaffa, Acre (Akko), Lydda (Lod), and Ramla as cities emptied by fleeing Arabs. It quotes a figure of “338 towns and villages and large parts of 94 other cities and towns,” attributing that figure to scholar Don Peretz.[5] A Jewish Virtual Library account says the entire Arab population of Tiberias—6,000 people—was evacuated under British military supervision after Jewish forces took the town in April 1948. For Haifa, it reports that more than 50,000 Palestinians had left by the end of the battle and recounts different contemporary explanations, including fear, calls by Arab leaders to leave, and Jewish efforts to persuade residents to stay.[22]

The distinction between villages and urban localities also matters when interpreting later lists. One IMPACT-se review quotes 2020–21 Palestinian school material naming Ramleh, Lod, Beit Jibrin, Yazour, and Askalan (Ashkelon) among places from which Palestinians were displaced after 1948. The same material names Beersheba, Iraq al-Manshiyya, Falluja, Webna, al-Masmiyya, Salamah, Aqar, Qatra, and Khulda in connection with displaced people’s homes, keys, or land. The passage groups cities, villages, towns, and other localities together and does not give a separate depopulation date for each.[18]

The reviewed Grade 7 textbook material in another IMPACT-se report states that 479 of 807 Palestinian villages came under Israeli control in 1948 and that more than 370 were destroyed between 1948 and 1950. It names Deir Yassin, Salamah, and al-Khayriyyah as villages described as destroyed and incorporated into Jewish residential areas. These are figures and examples reproduced from textbook content; the review does not supply a village-by-village enumeration or its own methodology for the counts.[7]

Other textbook material names Tantura as a village whose surviving residents were expelled and whose structures were then destroyed. The sources also record that textbook accounts sometimes connect displaced people to homes, keys, or land, but such passages do not constitute a standardized inventory of which villages were depopulated, when residents left, or what happened to each site.[18]

The sources describe a range of postwar outcomes: village houses and other structures were demolished, land was confiscated or redistributed, new communities were established, and in some places buildings survived. The Library of Congress study says about 370 new Jewish settlements were built between 1948 and 1953, an estimated 350 on what it calls “abandoned Arab property.” It also describes Arab land as confiscated for new settlements and refugee property as a major asset to the new state. These are broad descriptions of land use and policy, not a village-by-village inventory.[5]

A Jerusalem Post account says the state took control of depopulated Arab villages under the Absentees’ Property Law of 1950, and reports that most were bulldozed and their lands redistributed to kibbutzim, moshavim, and new Israeli settlements. The same account gives a total of 700 depopulated Arab villages, a figure that is not reconciled with the lower totals in several other sources. Lifta is described as an exception: its deserted houses remained standing, and Jewish refugees from Yemen and Kurdistan moved into them.[13]

The fate of particular sites could involve continued disputes over return. Iqrit, a Maronite Arab village in the Galilee, is described in an Israeli civics textbook account reproduced by IMPACT-se as having been ordered evacuated by Israeli forces in 1948 with a promise that residents could return after the fighting. The account says the promise was not fulfilled and that the Supreme Court ruled in 1951 that villagers should be allowed back, but they did not return despite later litigation and further promises.[15]

A Times of Israel report gives a more specific account of Iqrit: it says the Christian village was emptied in November 1948 during Operation Hiram, with residents promised they could return within days. The promise was not fulfilled; the 1951 Supreme Court ruling was not implemented before the village houses were demolished. At the time of the report, the church and cemetery were the only village structures remaining.[23]

The same textbook review discusses Bir’im alongside Iqrit. It describes both as Maronite Arab villages whose residents were ordered to leave in 1948 with a promise of return after fighting, and says the 1951 court ruling did not lead to their return.[15] A Ynet article places the villages in the Upper Galilee, says residents were ordered to leave temporarily about a week after their capture in late 1948, and reports that the area was declared a military zone and the village houses were bombed. It says a court found in 1951 that there was no legal basis for preventing their return, and reports that 24,591 dunams of village land were expropriated and allocated to nearby communities and a nature reserve.[24]

Other reported cases also connect displacement to restrictions on return. A Jerusalem Post account says al-Ghabisiyya had about 800 residents during the war and that residents left during the fighting. After a 1951 High Court of Justice decision permitted their return, the army declared the area a closed military zone, preventing return; security forces later razed the village, leaving its mosque as the only standing structure. The same report identifies al-Lajun as an abandoned northern village whose former residents mostly lived in nearby Arab communities.[25]

Ein Hawd is described as a village of 700–900 people in 1948. A Jerusalem Post account says it was occupied in summer 1948 and that refugees still in the country were not permitted to return. In July 1949, immigrants from Tunisia and Algeria were settled in the village, but it remained deserted for a period after attempts to establish a moshav failed; Kibbutz Nir Etzion was founded in 1949 on the former village’s agricultural lands. The article explicitly notes that whether the original residents were expelled or abandoned the village depends on whom one asks.[26]

Reports also describe internally displaced people who remained inside Israel. A Ynet account estimates that nearly a quarter of the approximately 150,000 Palestinians who remained within Israel’s borders in 1948—about 35,000 people—were internally displaced. It says most found refuge in Arab localities near their former villages and gives al-Birwa as an example: its displaced residents were distributed among Jadeidi-Makr, Deir al-Asad, and Bi'ina.[24]

The same account describes houses being demolished after displacement and says that in some cases the Jewish National Fund was assigned to plant forests that would obscure former village sites, giving the South Africa Forest over Lubya as an example. It also says Balad al-Sheikh became Nesher and Baysan became Beit She'an.[24] A Globes report quotes Hanna Sweid, then head of the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, estimating that approximately 500 Arab localities of different sizes were destroyed during the war and that dozens of internally displaced localities remained within the Green Line, mainly in the Galilee and to a lesser extent in the Triangle.[27]

Several reference works are explicitly framed as registers or village histories. The National Library of Israel catalogs The Palestinian Nakba, 1948: The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, compiled by S. H. Abu-Sitta. Its record identifies a revised second edition published in 2000 by the Palestinian Return Centre in English and Arabic, but does not expose the locality entries.[28] The Library also catalogs All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, edited by Walid Khalidi, with research and text by Sharif S. Elmusa and Muhammad Ali Khalidi; the record describes an illustrated, mapped volume of 636 pages, published circa 1992, with an index and bibliography.[29]

An Internet Archive description of an Arabic edition of All That Remains says it contains detailed entries on 418 Palestinian villages, covering population statistics and topography, prewar history and economy, military occupation, subsequent fate, and the present condition of former sites.[30] A separate catalog description says Noga Kadman’s 2015 Erased from Space and Consciousness reconstructs the histories of 418 depopulated villages using official documents, kibbutz publications, and visits to former village sites. It also describes postwar demolition, confiscation, settlement by Jewish communities in some locations, and renaming. These catalog descriptions establish the scope attributed to the books, not a complete list reproduced in the records themselves.[2]

Different sources report different totals. The Center for Israel Education says more than 40 percent—370—of more than 850 Arab villages had been abandoned, and that less than 15 percent of the Palestinian Arab population remained in the area that became Israel. The Library of Congress study quotes the separate figure of 338 towns and villages plus large parts of 94 other cities and towns.[4][5] Britannica reports more than 400 Palestinian Arab towns and villages destroyed or depopulated from the start of the civil war through the end of the conventional war, rising above 500 when nonpermanent encampments are counted. Encyclopedia.com gives a lower aggregate of more than 350 villages abandoned or emptied and says most were destroyed.[1][9]

These totals do not necessarily count the same things. The Center for Israel Education’s figure concerns villages abandoned; the Library of Congress figure includes towns and parts of cities; Britannica’s higher total includes destroyed or depopulated towns and villages, with an additional figure that counts encampments; and Encyclopedia.com uses “abandoned or emptied.” A 2025 House resolution introduced in the 119th Congress claims that Israel had depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities by 1949, often demolishing structures and planting forests. It was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee; the claim is an assertion in an introduced resolution, not a count established by enacted law.[31]

Further totals appear in sources with distinct scopes. A Jerusalem Post article gives 700 depopulated Arab villages, while a Globes report quotes an estimate of about 500 Arab localities of different sizes.[13][27] A Maariv review discussing Ilan Pappé’s book gives 530 villages and separately mentions 11 towns and several mixed cities, including Jaffa and Haifa. The figures are not reconciled in the sources, and there is no indication that they use the same geographic, temporal, or definitional boundaries.[32]

Maps can broaden the scope still further. A Meir Amit report discusses Palestinian maps whose legends variously mark villages described as destroyed in 1948–1950, localities from 1948 and 1967, or villages abandoned from the early twentieth century through 1967. The article discusses map types and legends but does not reproduce a complete village-name list. It therefore cannot establish one exhaustive list for the broader conflict period.[8]

Other efforts likewise document places without supplying a definitive inventory in the material available here. A Ynet report describes a Google Earth project in which contributor Thameen Darby marked hundreds of Palestinian villages that existed before the war and had vanished by 1948, with some sites replaced by Israeli communities and towns. The report describes the contributor’s project rather than verifying a comprehensive list. Together, the registers, maps, and projects show substantial interest in documenting former localities, while underscoring the limits of aggregate figures and catalog summaries for compiling a single list.[33]

The causes of departure, responsibility for expulsions, and the meaning of postwar non-return are subjects of historical and political dispute. The Library of Congress study records opposed Palestinian and Israeli explanations of the exodus, while the Center for Israel Education describes several interacting factors.[4][5] Britannica likewise distinguishes forced removal from flight prompted by fear. The sources do not support treating every village as a case with the same cause or sequence.[3]

The sources also contain attributed interpretations of policy. A Jerusalem Post account of historian Benny Morris describes early Haganah policy as defensive, followed by a March 1948 plan to secure roads and strategic locations ahead of an anticipated invasion by regular Arab armies. It says brigade commanders could choose to evict inhabitants of villages and towns in their operational areas, while quoting Morris’s view that the plan did not state a general policy or desire to expel Palestine’s Arab inhabitants. The article also attributes to Morris the view that the Israeli decision to bar refugee return consolidated between April and August 1948.[34]

Other sources emphasize expulsions and systematic depopulation. The National Library of Israel record of Seth Anziska’s article describes a contemporaneous migration report as documenting Israeli involvement in expulsions and systematic village depopulation. A Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies article, summarizing Adel Manna’s account of the Galilee, says Israeli forces prevented some people who had fled during fighting from returning, and describes village destruction, land confiscation, and Jewish settlement. These accounts are presented as part of contested interpretations rather than as a comprehensive village list.[11][35]

Differences can also concern particular cases. In Ein Hawd, the cited report says whether residents were expelled or left depends on whom one asks. The Maalul report presents a descendant’s account of water deprivation and killings alongside a heritage guide’s rejection of documentation for a massacre.[20][26] Deir Yassin’s casualty figures vary across the materials, and the IMPACT-se review explicitly notes uncertainty and continuing contention. These examples counsel against turning disputed estimates or attributed testimony into settled, uniform entries for every locality.[15]