Zikrin

Zikrin lay twenty-seven kilometers northwest of Hebron, at the easternmost edge of the southern coastal plain, just below the western foothills of the Hebron mountains. Secondary roads tied it to Bayt Jibrin by way of Kudna, and through ’Ajjur to the highway running northeast to the Jerusalem–Jaffa road. The site was inhabited deep into antiquity — it has been identified with the Roman-period Kefar Dikrina — and in the Ottoman register of 1596 it paid taxes on wheat, barley, sesame, fruit, and vineyards. The modern villagers, all Muslims, lived in houses of stone, mud, and wood strung along two roads, with an elementary school and a few small shops; wells in the valley to the north watered their gardens. In 1945 they numbered 960 and held more than 17,000 dunums, the great bulk of it sown with cereals.

The end came with Operation Yoav. On 22–23 October 1948 — Zochrot dates the occupation to 23 October — the Giv’ati Brigade stormed Zikrin along with a cluster of other villages in the Hebron area, in a push coordinated with the offensive against the Egyptian army further south. According to Benny Morris, most of the population of the Hebron-area villages had already fled the fighting; those who remained were expelled.

No Israeli settlement was established on Zikrin’s lands; Beit Nir, founded in 1955 on the lands of neighboring Kudna, lies about three kilometers south of the site. Today the ruin — called Khirbet Dhikrin — is thick with weeds, scrub, and wild grass, shaded by olive and carob trees. Truncated stone terraces, half-swallowed by cactus, still climb the slopes, and the rubble of houses breaks through the undergrowth. The surrounding land is planted in wheat by Israeli farmers or used as rangeland.

Sources

• Zikrin — Palestine Remembered
• Zikrin — Zochrot
• Zikrin — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)