Summary
Coastal Palestinian village of 1,500 people within the ancient walls of Caesarea, the first village to be expelled in its entirety, on 15 February 1948, in Pappe’s account; the neighbouring Barrat Qisarya, Khirbat al-Burj, Atlit and Daliyat al-Rawha were destroyed or expelled in the same February operations.
Details
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Qisarya’s 1,500 people lived in stone houses next to Bedouin tent families, among them several Jewish families who had bought land and lived practically inside the village; its wells supported extensive citrus and banana cultivation (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.103-104).
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The three villages around Caesarea were chosen because they had no defence force of any kind; the order came on 5 February 1948 to occupy, expel and destroy them (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.103-104).
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Qisarya was expelled on 15 February 1948 in a few hours, so systematically that the same troops evacuated and destroyed another four villages that day, under the eyes of British troops in nearby police stations (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.104).
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Barrat Qisarya, about 1,000 people, was wiped out in February; today the Jewish development town Or Akiva covers it. Khirbat al-Burj’s Ottoman khan is its only standing building, presented by a plaque as a historic castle with no word about the village (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.104).
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At Atlit, where a Palestinian salt company had invited 500 Jews to work alongside 1,000 Arabs, Hagana intimidation had already reduced the Palestinians to 200 before the February operation expelled the Palestinian co-workers (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.104-105).
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The mosque of Qisarya was turned into a restaurant by the Israelis (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.253).
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Joseph Weitz, Consultancy, Dalet Plan