Summary
Village near Safad, neighbouring Jish and Safsaf, whose people fled after the fall of Safad and the Ayn al-Zaytun massacre and were never allowed back, though the extended Hulayhel clan returned in December 1948 through Mano Friedman — only to be settled first in depopulated al-Ja’una and then, by force in July 1949, in ‘Akbara, while Qadditha’s houses were blown up (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.201-202).
Details
- Most villagers moved away after Safad fell, terrorized by the massacre in neighbouring ‘Ayn al-Zaytun, whose soldiers also directed sniper fire at Qadditha’s houses from time to time until the Galilee occupation was completed in October 1948 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.201).
- ‘Ali Hulayhel (Abu Husayn), Manna’s father-in-law, had rented a house in Jish and harvested his Qadditha plantings in the summer months before migrating to south Lebanon after Operation Hiram; most villagers ended in refugee camps (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.201).
- Mano Friedman, who had commercial and agricultural dealings with the Hulayhel clan, sent an envoy to Khaled Hulayhel in Lebanon advising immediate return; Khaled would come back only with his entire clan, Friedman agreed, and the clan returned in December 1948 to houses in the depopulated village of al-Ja’una (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.201).
- Every request to return to Qadditha itself was refused — Manna calls this a general policy: returnees were settled in depopulated villages so the land stayed in state hands and they remained Present Absentees (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.201).
- A year or more after the clan’s forced move to ‘Akbara, the authorities blew up Qadditha’s houses; in the 1970s individual Jewish settlers built near the destroyed houses without planning or permit and expanded on the village’s lands despite government warnings (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.202).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, ‘Akbara, Mano Friedman, Present Absentees, Safad