Sar'a

Sar’a stood on a prominent hill on the western slope of a mountain about twenty-five kilometres west of Jerusalem, 350 metres up. A two-kilometre side road linked it to the highway running northeast from Bayt Jibrin to meet the Jaffa–Jerusalem road. The village may stand on the site of the Canaanite Sur’a, the Zorah of the Book of Joshua, and was known as Sarea in the Roman period. In 1596 it was a village of ninety-four people in the nahiya of Ramla, taxed on wheat, barley, olives, goats and beehives. Edward Robinson passed it in 1841 shortly after leaving al-Latrun. By 1875 its population was about four hundred. The British surveyors of the Survey of Western Palestine described it in the late nineteenth century as a village on a low bare hill of white eocene chalk, with the maqam of al-Nabi Samat on the ground to the south — sometimes identified with the biblical Samson, who by tradition lived here.

The village was divided into three quarters, each a cluster of mud and stone houses cut by narrow winding alleys, with a few shops in the middle of each. In the southern quarter the building climbed the slope to the hilltop; in the northern it ran along the northeastern foot of the hill. The people were Muslims. The 1931 census counted 271 people in 65 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 340, on 4,967 dunums of which 2,979 were under cereals and 194 irrigated or orchard. Farming was rainfed and irrigated from springs in the valley floors — grain, olives and fruit including figs, apricots and grapes. Olive groves covered 115 dunums in the east of the village land and fruit trees were planted in the northern fields. Forest and wild herbs grew on the western and eastern slopes. Sar’a was itself an archaeological site of caves, tombs, rock-hewn cisterns and a press.

In mid-July 1948 a number of villages on the approaches to Jerusalem were taken during Operation Dani. The History of the War of Independence records that the important role in the eastern sector of that operation was given to the Har’el Brigade. Sar’a, which was defended by Egyptian forces, was occupied on 13–14 July by Har’el’s Fourth Battalion, in preparation for the attack on nearby ‘Artuf, which was held by irregular forces under Egyptian command. Zochrot gives 14 July and the same brigade.

Tarum was built on the northeastern edge of the site, on village land, in 1950. Tzor’a was established about two kilometres southwest in 1949, after the village had been destroyed; it stands on land belonging to Dayr Aban. Stone rubble and iron girders lie among the trees on the site. A flat stone in the debris is inscribed with verses of the Qur’an and bears the date A.H. 1355 — 1936. On the western edge stands a shrine holding the tombs of two local religious teachers. The valley to the northeast is covered with fig, almond and cypress.

Sources

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