Bayt Naqquba

Bayt Naqquba stood on a long hill running north to south about nine and a half kilometres west of Jerusalem, with wadis on every side but the north. It faced Suba across the valley to the south and lay on the northern side of the Jaffa–Jerusalem highway, with secondary roads to five nearby villages. In the late nineteenth century it was described as a village built on a slope with a spring to the south.

The village had a rectangular outline and most of its houses and small shops were stone. Its people were Muslims, and a spring on the eastern edge gave them drinking water. The 1931 census counted 177 people in 41 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 240, on 2,979 dunums of which 515 were under cereals and 303 irrigated or orchard, 194 of those in olives. Olives and vines grew mainly west of the village and on the valley floors and were irrigated from the village springs; wild plants grew at the foot of the slopes. Khirbat al-Khanazir and Khirbat al-Ra’s lay nearby.

What is recorded of the capture of Bayt Naqquba is that it took place early in April 1948, which places it within Operation Nachshon, the largest Haganah operation of the war to that point; Zochrot gives 1 April and names Haganah units. From its position it was probably taken at about the same time as al-Qastal and Qaluniyya, both of which were levelled shortly after they were occupied. Benny Morris gives a date but does not record what became of the villagers. The record here is thin, and it should be read as thin.

Israel established Beyt Neqofa on the remains of the village in 1949. A few houses are still in use, as dwellings or as stables; they are stone, and many of them domed. Stones taken from the ruins of the village houses have been used as entrance steps for new Jewish homes. Almond and olive trees and cactus cover the site. In what Khalidi’s survey describes as probably a unique case among all the villages occupied and depopulated, a new Arab village with the same name was established south of the original site in 1962, and some refugees from the old village were allowed to live there. The old cemetery lies about half a kilometre south of the village site, and the newer village maintains it.

Sources

• Bayt Naqquba — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• Bayt Naqquba — Zochrot, drawn from Walid Khalidi, All That Remains (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)