Info
District: Haifa
Population 1948: 220
Occupation date: 01/05/1948
Jewish settlements on village/town land before 1948: None
Jewish settlements on village/town land after 1948: None
Background:
Khirbat al-Mansura Before 1948
The village was located at 18.5 km distance from Haifa on the top of a round hill on the north-eastern slope of Mount Carmel, facing the Marj ibn 'Amir plain in the east and north. The mound of Tall Qamun was about 1 km to the southeast. Khirbat al-Mansura was classified as a hamlet in the Palestine Index Gazetteer and its inhabitants were Druze. Although it has not been possible to identify it with any known historical site, its antiquity was evident from the ruins of building foundations and rock-cut tombs in and around the site.
Occupation, Depopulation, and Israeli Settlements
Most of the villages in this area were occupied in the wake of the fall of Haifa. Khirbat al-Mansura may have succumbed to a Haganah assault as part of Operation Bi'ur Chametz ('Passover Clearing'), which was part of a larger Operation Misparayim ('Scissors'), designed to cut the Arab section of Haifa in two. Bi'ur Chametz began on 24 April, two days after the fall of Haifa, with attacks on Balad al-Shaykh, some 10 km northwest of Khirbat al-Mansura. It continued for at least three more days, during which Haganah units were deployed to occupy Haifa's hinterland and tighten their hold on the city. This occurred in the last week of April 1948, and was achieved mainly by units of the Carmeli Brigade. In a report filed at the end of april, British army officers said they thought it 'likely that the Haganah will continue mortaring and shelling around Haifa to create an evacuation of the [Arab] population.'
The village lands have been merged with those of the Arab town of Daliyat al-Karmil.
The Village Today
No traces of the houses remain. Storage houses for grain have been built 200 m south of the site by a farmer from the Arab town of 'Isfiya.
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Source: al-Khalidi, Walid (ed.). All that remains: the Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington DC: 1992.
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