Jerusalem district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
Ras Abu 'Ammar
راس أبو عَمّار
Ras Abu 'Ammar was a village of 620 people on a hill ringed on three sides by Wadi al-Sarar, watering its vines from ponds fed off the mountain top. The Har'el Brigade took it on 21 October 1948 during Operation Ha-Har. The two-room schoolhouse is still standing.
See Ras Abu 'Ammar on the Atlas31.7381°N · 35.0903°ERas Abu ‘Ammar stood on an elongated hill running southeast to northwest about fourteen kilometres west of Jerusalem, wrapped on three sides by the deep Wadi al-Sarar and overlooked by mountains on all of them. It lay less than a kilometre south of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, and a secondary road linked it to a highway running south towards Bethlehem. In the late nineteenth century it was described as a stone village on a small ridge above an open and rather flat valley in which the villagers had planted olives.
Its plan was rectangular and most of its houses were stone, divided into two sections by a main street running northwest to southeast. During the Mandate new building extended along the roads to al-Qabu and ‘Aqqur, to the east and north, and along the highway to the south. There was an elementary school and a few small shops at the centre. The people were Muslims and kept more than one shrine for local sages, among them one for a Shaykh Abu ‘Ammar. They relied on springs for drinking water and for irrigation. The 1931 census counted 488 people in 106 houses — a figure that also covers ‘Ayn Hubin and ‘Aqqur — and the 1945 statistics counted 620, on 8,342 dunums of which 2,791 were under cereals and 925 irrigated or orchard, 100 of those in olives. Grain, vegetables and fruit trees were rainfed; the vines were watered from spring water that ran down from the mountain top and collected in ponds. Nearby Khirbat Kafr Sum was inhabited in the Crusader period and again in the sixteenth century.
The village fell in the course of Operation Ha-Har, probably to units of the Har’el Brigade. Benny Morris dates its fall to 21 October 1948 and attributes it to a direct military assault; Zochrot gives the same date and names Har’el.
Israel established Tzur Hadassa on village land south of the site in 1960. The stone rubble of the houses is strewn across the site with wild growth among it, and almond, olive and carob trees. Cactus grows on the southeastern and southwestern sides. A two-room stone building that was the schoolhouse still stands to the southeast.
Sources
- Ras Abu ‘Ammar — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
- Ras Abu ‘Ammar — Zochrot, drawn from Walid Khalidi, All That Remains (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)
Cited works
2- palquest.org — ras abu ammar(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17126/ras-abu-ammar
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49469/en
Connected in the archive
29 connected records29 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 3 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Al-Qabuالقبو
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: During the Mandate new building extended along the roads to al-Qabu and 'Aqqur, to the east and north, and along the highway to the south.
- Bethlehemبيت لحم
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: It lay less than a kilometre south of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, and a secondary road linked it to a highway running south towards Bethlehem.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Ras Abu 'Ammar stood on an elongated hill running southeast to northwest about fourteen kilometres west of Jerusalem, wrapped on three sides by the deep Wadi al-Sarar and overlooked by mountains on all of them.
names this place — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Dheisheh Campمخيّم الدهيشة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The largest single group, roughly 15.6 percent, comes from Zakariyya; then Bayt Itab (7.2 percent), Jarash and Bayt Nattif (6.1 percent each), Allar (5.9), Ras Abu Ammar (4.6), al-Walaja (4.5), Dayr Aban (4.3), Ajjur (3.9) and al-Qabu (3.8).
in the same district — 25 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- 'Allarعَلاّر
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- 'Artufعَرْتُوف
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- 'Islinعِسْلِين
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Malihaالمالِحَة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Qastalالقسطل
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Walajaالولجة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- and 19 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Ras Abu 'Ammar.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/ras-abu-ammar.- MLA
“Ras Abu 'Ammar.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/ras-abu-ammar. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-ras-abu-ammar, title = {Ras Abu 'Ammar}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/ras-abu-ammar}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }