Ayn Karim

'Ayn Karim
Postcard from 'Ayn Karim, pre-1948
'Ayn Karim
Arabic	عين كارم
Subdistrict	Jerusalem
Coordinates	31°45′55″N 35°8′58″E / 31.76528°N 35.14944°ECoordinates: 31°45′55″N 35°8′58″E / 31.76528°N 35.14944°E
Palestine grid	165/130
Population	3,689 (1948[1])
Area	15,029[2] dunams
Date of depopulation	10 and 21 April 1948, 16 July 1948[3]
Cause(s) of depopulation	Influence of nearby town's fall
Secondary cause	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Ein Karem[4]

For early and contemporary history, landmarks, and further information, see Ein Karem

'Ayn Karim (Arabic: عين كارم‎‎) was a Palestinian Arab town in the Mandatory Palestine's Jerusalem Subdistrict.

History

The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine placed 'Ayn Karim in the Jerusalem enclave intended for international control.^[5] In February 1948 the village's 300 guerilla fighters were reinforced by a well-armed Arab Liberation Army force of mainly Syrian fighters, and on March 10 a substantial Iraqi detachment arrived in the village, followed within days by some 160 Egyptian fighters. On March 19, the villagers joined their foreign guests in attacking a Jewish convoy on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road.^[6] Immediately after the April 1948 massacre at the nearby village of Deir Yassin (2 km to the north), most of the women and children in the village were evacuated. It was attacked by Israeli forces during the ten-day campaign of July 1948. The remaining civilian inhabitants fled on July 10–11. The Arab Liberation Army forces who had camped in the village left on July 14–16 after Jewish forces captured two dominating hilltops, Khirbet Beit Mazmil and Khirbet al Hamama, and shelled the village. During its last days, 'Ayn Karim suffered from severe food shortages.^[7]

Israel later incorporated the village into the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem as Ein Karem.^[7] Ein Kerem was one of the few ethnically cleansed Arab localities which survived the war with most of the buildings intact. Palestinian homes were seized and resettled with Jewish immigrants. Over the years, the bucolic atmosphere attracted a population of artisans and craftsmen.

See also

• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestinian exodus
• List of villages depopulated during the Arab–Israeli conflict

References

1. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Depopulated Jerusalem Localities of the year 1948 by Selected Variables
2. Welcome To 'Ayn Karim, Palestine Remembered
3. Morris, 2004, p. xx, village #360. Also gives the cause for depopulation
4. Morris, 2004, p. xxii, settlement #107. 1949
5. UN map of Jerusalem Corpus Separatum
6. Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (2010) p182.
7. Morris, 2004, p. 436, quoting: Entries for 10 and 11 July 1948, General Staff∖Operations Logbook, IDFA∖922∖75∖∖1176; and Mordechai Abir, ´The local Arab Factor in the War of Independence (Jerusalem Area) `18-19, IDFA 1046∖70∖185∖∖; and Yeruham, `Arab Information (from 14.7.48) ´, 15 July 1948 HA 105∖127aleph.

Bibliography

• Barron, J. B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922. Government of Palestine.
• Hadawi, Sami (1970). Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Centre.
• Khalidi, Walid (1992). All That Remains. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0-88728-224-5.
• Mills, E., ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas. Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
• Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6.
• Petersen, Andrew (2001). A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine (British Academy Monographs in Archaeology). 1. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-727011-0. p. 100-103

External links

• Welcome To 'Ayn Karim, Palestine Remembered
• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17: IAA, Wikimedia commons