Al-Mansura

Al-Mansura stood on the northern shoulder of a mountain in Upper Galilee at about 675 metres, twenty-nine kilometres from Acre. The summit rose behind it to the south; to the east, west and north the land fell away in wide expanses. The Palestine Index Gazetteer classified it as a hamlet. Its houses were built at some distance from one another, and a secondary road ran down to the Acre–Ra’s al-Naqura highway on the coast. Until 1923 al-Mansura was not in Palestine at all: it belonged to Lebanon, and passed to the Palestine side only when Britain and France delineated the international border in the area.

The village was predominantly Christian and had its own church. Drinking water came from a well to the north and from three water tanks to the south. Its economy rested on agriculture and animal husbandry, and 900 dunums of olive trees were held in common by the people of al-Mansura and of the neighbouring villages of Fassuta and Dayr al-Qasi. Two khirbas beside the village held building foundations, presses, cisterns and the remains of a fort.

The population figure has to be stated carefully. When the Mandate census was taken in 1945, the counts for al-Mansura, Dayr al-Qasi and Fassuta were amalgamated and not separated: the three together came to 2,300 people, 1,420 Muslims and 880 Christians. The 1931 figure of 688 likewise includes Fassuta. The land statistics are shared in the same way — 34,013 dunums for the three villages in 1944/45, of which 6,475 were allocated to cereals and 1,617 were irrigated or planted in orchards. There is no separate published count for al-Mansura alone.

The village was probably attacked in October 1948, during Operation Hiram; Zochrot dates its occupation to 31 October and lists the Carmeli, Oded, Seventh and Golani brigades as the units involved in that sector. What is documented without ambiguity is what came afterwards. In mid-November 1948 the Israeli army decided to empty the Israeli side of the Israeli–Lebanese border of its Arab villages. The people of al-Mansura were ordered to leave. Some crossed into Lebanon; most were taken in trucks to the village of al-Rama, to the south. In February 1949 the Maronite church appealed to the Israeli government on their behalf, asking that they be allowed to return to their homes. The appeal was denied. For many years afterwards those villagers of al-Mansura who had remained inside Israel continued to plead with the authorities, to no avail.

Elqosh was established on part of the village land in 1949 and Biranit in the early 1950s — its original name was al-Mansura. Netu’a followed in 1966, less than a kilometre from the site, then Mattat in 1979 and Abbirim in 1980. The village houses have been completely levelled, the debris pushed into heaps along the northern edge of the site, iron construction rods projecting from some of the larger blocks of cement. The site is fenced with wire and used for grazing cows, and a chicken coop belonging to Netu’a stands to its west. The only village structure still standing is the church of Mari Yohanna, 200 metres south on the slope of the mountain, its roof and parts of its walls collapsed. Vines have been planted between the church and the village site. A military airstrip and an army base occupy the top of the mountain to the south.

Sources

• al-Mansura — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest)
• al-Mansura (Akka) — Zochrot
• Al-Mansura, Acre — Wikipedia