Farradiyya

Al-Farradiyya stood on the southern slope of Mount Zabud at about 375 metres, eight kilometres from Safad, with the Nazareth–Safad highway passing just to the north. It may have been built on the site of a village known in the Roman period as Parod. The Arab geographer al-Maqdisi, who died in 985, called it al-Farradhiyya and described a large village renowned for its groves of fruit trees and grapes, in a pleasant area with plentiful water. In 1596 it was a village in the nahiya of Jira, in the liwa’ of Safad, with a population of 237, paying tax on wheat, barley, olives and fruit, and on goats, beehives and pasture. In the late nineteenth century it was a stone village on a plain whose 150 residents tilled small gardens and grew figs and olives.

Its population was predominantly Muslim, and it had a boys’ elementary school; the British built a fortified police station there. Springs issuing from Mount al-Jarmaq to the north gave it an ample water supply. Its agriculture was thriving and unusual. The village was known for a model experimental farm covering 300 dunums, founded to improve the varieties of apples, figs, grapes, apricots, pears and almonds and to develop new seed varieties. It had an arboretum where 2,000 plants were grown and distributed to peasants, and it provided extension services to farmers from both the Acre and the Safad subdistricts, advising them on poultry production and beekeeping. The station was supervised by a Palestinian agronomist who had done his graduate studies at Montpellier and had begun work there in 1932. Besides the station there were a number of water-powered mills in the village’s vicinity. In 1944/45, 4,137 dunums were allocated to cereals and 1,182 were irrigated or planted in orchards, out of 19,747 in all. The 1931 census counted 465 people in 101 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 670 Muslims, though the figure of 760 also circulates. Al-Farradiyya was the site of a maqam for a local religious teacher, al-Shaykh Mansur — a square room about four metres on a side, ruinous by the Mandate period, with worn pilasters at the northeast corner and in the middle of the northern wall and a cornice of moulded stones at the top — and there are ruins of mills and an aqueduct.

People from the neighbouring villages, mainly Akbara and al-Zahiriyya al-Tahta, took refuge in al-Farradiyya in early May 1948 as they fled the path of Operation Yiftach, according to testimony from the villagers of Akbara. The History of the War of Independence implies that al-Farradiyya itself did not come under Israeli control until 30 October 1948, during Operation Hiram. It was probably one of several villages occupied when a pincer manoeuvre closed on a pocket in central Galilee, west of Safad, and it apparently was not attacked directly: as units of the Golani Brigade advanced north from ‘Aylabun, some ten kilometres to the south, towards Sa’sa’, about ten kilometres to the north, the village was surrounded on all sides. Because it suffered no direct assault, many of its residents stayed in their homes until February 1949.

In December 1948 and January 1949 senior Israeli officials increasingly supported a plan to expel them. The Minority Affairs Minister Bechor Shitrit argued for expulsion on the pretext of preventing the infiltration of refugees back into the village; Benny Morris quotes him saying that if the infiltrations were not halted Israel would have to “conquer the Galilee anew.” Morris adds that the Committee for Transferring Arabs from Place to Place endorsed a proposal on 15 December to expel the 261 remaining inhabitants of al-Farradiyya and Kafr ‘Inan. The plan was not executed until February 1949. Some villagers were evicted to other villages under Israeli control; others were expelled to the Triangle area on the West Bank.

Israel founded the settlement of Parod on village land in 1949, about 300 metres east of the destroyed village, and Shefer in 1950 on the northern lands. Qaddarim was established east of the site in 1980 and moved southeast in 1987. The site is deserted and covered with wild thorns, trees and piles of stones from the destroyed homes. Cactus grows on the land around it, which is mostly used for grazing; some parts are wooded and serve as Israeli recreation grounds.

Sources

• al-Farradiyya — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest)
• al-Farradiyya — Zochrot
• Al-Farradiyya — Wikipedia