Jebata

Jebata (also Jebatha, Jabata, Jibbata and Jibta[1]) was a small Palestinian village located 25 kilometres southeast of Haifa on a mound in the Galilee, not far from the villages of Yafa an-Naseriyye, Al-Mujaydil and Ma'alul.[2] The village and its name are identified with the ancient town of Gabatha, which is mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome as lying within the borders of Diocaesarea near the great plain of Legio or Esdraelon.[3][4]

History

In the Ottoman era, a map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place, named as Gebat, but the position was misplaced, as that area was not surveyed directly by the French.[5]

In 1875 Victor Guérin gave the population as 350. "It is situated upon a low hillock, once occupied by a small tower, of which nothing remains but confused debris. A few cut stones scattered on the slopes and on the upper part of the hill are what is left of the Gabatha mentioned by Jerome in the Onomasticon."[6] In 1881 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Jebata as a small adobe hamlet, containing 80 people and cultivating 21 feddans.[7]

Laurence Oliphant wrote of a visit he made to Jebata which was published in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund in January 1885. He relates the discovery by the villagers of what appeared to be a large underground tomb, describing a chamber of solid masonry with a vaulted roof and other chambers hewn from the rock.[8]

Gottlieb Schumacher, as part of surveying for the construction of the Jezreel Valley railway, noted in 1900 that Jebata had grown considerably. “The proprietor, Sursock, built a number of dwellings covered with tile roofs, cleaned the well on the eastern slope and lined it with masonry”.[9]

British Mandate era

At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine ‘’Jebata’’ had a population of 318; 308 Muslims and 10 Christian,[10] with 9 Orthodox and 1 Armenian Christian.[11]

Jabata was one of five villages purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in 1924; the others being Afuleh, Sulam, Shatta and Knayfis. These five villages had a combined population of about 3,000 to 4,000 people. Because the villagers paid tithes to the Sursock family in Beirut for the right to work the agricultural lands in the villages, they were deemed tenant farmers by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine, and the right of the Sursock family to sell the land to the JNF was upheld by the authorities. The built-up areas of the village, which included people's homes, were not the property of the Sursocks, but without land to cultivate, the transaction left the villagers without their means of livelihood.[12][13] On November 28, 1926, Gvat, a kibbutz, was established in its place. Jibta is one of a few villages named by Moshe Dayan in his 1969 statement regarding how there is not a single place built in the modern Jewish state of Israel that did not have a former Arab population.[14]

By the 1931 census Gvat had a population of 106; 1 Muslim and 105 Jews, in a total of 19 houses.[15]

References

  1. ↑ Palmer, 1881, p. 109
  2. ↑ Robinson, 1843, p. 78.
  3. ↑ Roller, 1998, p. 161.
  4. ↑ Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, p. 201
  5. ↑ Karmon, 1960, p. 167.
  6. ↑ Guérin, 1880, pp. 386-387; as given in Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 274
  7. ↑ Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 274
  8. ↑ Oliphant, 1885, p. 94
  9. ↑ Schumacher, 1900, p. 358
  10. ↑ Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Nazareth, p. 38
  11. ↑ Barron, 1923, Table XVI, p. 50
  12. ↑ Huneidi and Khalidi, 2001, p. 224
  13. ↑ 11,000 Dunams in Jebata, with 90 families living there, according to List of villages sold by Sursocks and their partners to the Zionists since British occupation of Palestine, evidence to the Shaw Commission, 1930
  14. ↑ Rogan and Shlaim, 2001, p. 207
  15. ↑ Mills, 1932, p. 73

Bibliography

External links

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