Mi'ar

Mi'ar
Mi'ar
Arabic	ميعار
Subdistrict	Acre
Coordinates
Palestine grid	173/253
Population	770 (1944)
Area	10,788 dunams
Date of depopulation	15-18 July 1948
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Atzmon, Ya'ad

Mi'ar (Arabic: ميعار‎‎), known to the Crusaders as Myary, was a Palestinian village located 17.5 kilometers east of Acre. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

History

Mi'ar contained the archaeological remains of buildings, fragments of columns, olive presses, and cisterns.

Ottoman era

Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Mi'ar appeared in the 1596 tax registers as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Akka under the Liwa of Safad, with a population of 55. It paid taxes on wheat and barley, fruit, as well as on goats and beehives.

In 1875, Victor Guérin visited Mi'ar, and "remarked here several trunks of columns, three broken capitals, and a certain number ol cut stones, coming from some ancient building. I observed also many blocks of ancient appearance disposed round threshing-floors. There are also cisterns, walls, and caves cut in the rock, which belong to times more or less remote." He found Mi'ar to be inhabited by 500, all Muslims.

In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as a large village situated on high ground that was rough and uncultivated. The villagers, whose number was estimated to be 1500 (in 1859), cultivated some 30 faddans. An elementary school was founded by the Ottomans in 1888, however, it closed its doors in the final years of the Empire.

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Me'ar had a population of 429, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 543, still all Muslims, in a total of 109 houses.

During the Arab Revolt in October 1938, the village was entirely destroyed by the British army for its alleged support of the rebels.

In 1944/45 a total of 2,878 dunams of village land was used for cereals, while 113 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards.

1948 War and aftermath

On 20 June 1948 Israeli soldiers entered the village of Mi'ar and shot indiscriminately against the villagers while they were working in their fields. According to Ilan Pappé, the houses were destroyed. 40 villagers were killed. One witness was the writer Muhammad Ali Taha, then a 17-year-old boy. The villagers later returned to Mi'ar and continued living there until the Israeli troops re-occupied it in mid-July 1948 and expelled them for good.

Its 893 inhabitants fled an attack by the Israeli Sheva Brigade, part of the second stage of Operation Dekel, on 15 July 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The Jewish localities of Segev (now Atzmon) and Ya'ad lie upon the former village's lands. According to the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, the village in 1992 was: "Some truncated stone walls, simple graves, and fig and olive trees remain on the site, which is covered by cypress trees. The area has been turned into recreational and picnic grounds."

See also

• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War

External links

• Welcome to Mi'ar
• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 5: IAA, Wikimedia commons
• Miar, at Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
• Mi3ar photos from Dr. Moslih Kanaaneh
• All About... Mi'ar, from Zochrot
• Visit to Mi’ar 12/4 2002, by Norma Musih, Zochrot

• Opposition to building plan in Mi’ar, Zochrot