Acre district · depopulated 1948 · 1 min read
Al-Birwa
البروة
Al-Birwa, on a rocky hill east of Acre, was a farming village of some 1,500 people — Muslims and Christians — and the birthplace of the poet Mahmoud Darwish. Captured in July 1948, it was destroyed almost entirely; a school, two shrines, and three houses are all that remain.
See Al-Birwa on the Atlas32.9052°N · 35.1802°E
Al-Birwa stood on a rocky hill sloping toward the Acre plain, about ten kilometers east of the city. Its people — 1,460 in the 1945 count, most of them Muslim with a Christian minority — farmed grain and olives, worshipped in a mosque and a church, and sent their sons to a school the Ottomans had built in 1882 and their daughters to one opened in 1942. In March 1941 a son was born there who would carry the village’s name into world literature: Mahmoud Darwish.
The village changed hands twice in the summer of 1948. Israeli forces first took it in June; the Arab Liberation Army briefly retook it; and in mid-July, during Operation Dekel, the Carmeli Brigade occupied it for good. Most of its people fled or were driven toward Lebanon and the neighboring Galilean villages. Darwish’s family crossed into Lebanon and slipped back a year later to find al-Birwa in ruins — a homecoming to absence that he would write about for the rest of his life.
Today three houses, two shrines, and the locked school building are all that stand of the village; the moshav of Ahihud and the kibbutz of Yas’ur sit on its lands. After a legal struggle, former residents won the right to fence and tend the Muslim and Christian cemeteries. Darwish, buried in Ramallah in 2008, kept al-Birwa in his verse as the measure of all lost places.
Sources
Cited works
4- palestineremembered.com — index(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/al-Birwa/index.html
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49015/en
- palquest.org — al birwa(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/16798/al-birwa
- palopenmaps.org(opens in a new tab)https://palopenmaps.org/
Connected in the archive
26 connected records26 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
born here — 1 record
- Mahmoud Darwishمحمود درويش
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: birthplace: "Al-Birwa, Palestine" → Al-Birwa (Acre)
named in this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Acreعكا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Al-Birwa, on a rocky hill east of Acre, was a farming village of some 1,500 people — Muslims and Christians — and the birthplace of the poet Mahmoud Darwish.
- Ramallahرام الله
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Darwish, buried in Ramallah in 2008, kept al-Birwa in his verse as the measure of all lost places.
names this place — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- The Villages of the Galilee
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: A farming village of about 1,500 Muslims and Christians east of Acre, and the birthplace of Mahmoud Darwish. A school and three ruins survive.
- In the Presence of Absence
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The book retraces the stations of his life — childhood in the Galilee village of al-Birwa, the flight of 1948, the return to a homeland made unrecognizable, the years of prison, exile, and fame — while meditating on language, love, and mortality.
in the same district — 21 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Al-Bassaالبصة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Damunالدامون
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Ghabisiyyaالغابسية
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Kabriالكابري
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Manshiyya (Acre)المَنْشِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- Al-Mansuraالمنصورة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Acre district.
- and 15 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Al-Birwa.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-birwa.- MLA
“Al-Birwa.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-birwa. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-birwa, title = {Al-Birwa}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-birwa}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }