Al-Tantura
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| al-Tantura | ||
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| Arabic | الطنطورة | |
| Also Spelled | Tantura | |
| District | Haifa | |
| Population | 1,490 (1945) | |
| Jurisdiction | 14,250 dunams (14.3 km²) | |
| Date of depopulation | 21 May 1948[1] | |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Explusion by Jewish forces | |
| Current localities | Nahsholim, Dor | |
Al-Tantura (Arabic: الطنطورة the Peak)[2]was a Palestinian Arab fishing village located 10 kilometers northwest of Zichron Yaakov [3] and 35 kilometers south of Haifa on the Mediterranean coastline.
In 1922, Tantura had a population of 722 inhabitants, rising to 953 according to the British Mandate census in 1931.[4] In Sami Hadawi's land and population survey in 1945, the town had a population 1,490 and a total land area of 14,250 dunams.[5]
There are two Islamic holy sites in the village's ruins, including a shrine dedicated to a Abd ar-Rahman Sa'd ad-Din.[6]
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[edit] History
[edit] Antiquity
Al-Tantura was built on the ruins of an ancient city known by the Ancient Greeks and Phoenicians as Dor.[7] It was the most southern settlement of the Phoenicians on the coast of Syria. According to the biblical Book of Kings, Dor was incorporated into David's Israelite kingdom. In the 10th century BCE, it became the capital of the Sharon province under Solomon, and was governed by his son-in-law, Abinadab [8]. Dor is mentioned in the Book of Judges and the Book of Kings as one of Solomon's commissariat districts (Judges1:27; IKings4:11). [9]
The site contains remnants of a Byzantine basilica and the Crusader fort of Merle (Khirbet el-Burj) . [10]
Off the coast of Dor, shipwrecks have been found from various periods. Underwater exploration of a Byzantine wreck discovered the remains of a medium-size boat constructed with iron nails. Based on coins recovered from the site, the boat dates to 665 CE, after the Muslim conquest. Artifacts include several objects testifying to the practice of light-fishing. [11]
[edit] 18th century
For years, muskets and cannon balls retrieved from the sea around Tantura were assumed to have found their way to the seabed by shipwreck. Two archaeologists, Wachsmann and Rayeh, studied the Atlas of Jacotin, published in 1820, which portrayed the regions through which Napoleon's troops had marched, and concluded that Tantura was the spot where Napoleon camped on May 21, 1799.[12]
[edit] 19th century
Sometime around 1880, Jewish pioneers from Zichron Yaakov bought 30 hectares of land in a marsh-ridden part of Tantura (the site of Kibbutz Nahsholim after the establishment of the State of Israel).[3] The land was transferred to Baron Edmond de Rothschild. After unsuccessful farming attempts by a group of young Rumanian Jews, the land was leased to local Arabs.[3]In 1891, Baron Rothschild financed the establishment of a bottle factory there, [13] hoping to use the fine sand on the shore to manufacture glass bottles for the fledging wine industry in Zichron Yaakov.[3]A building was constructed, a French glass specialist was brought in, dozens of workers were hired and three ships were purchased to transport raw material and bottles. However, the factory was abandoned in 1895 after a string of failures.[3]
[edit] 20th century
[edit] The attack on Tantura
In 1948 al-Tantura was within the area designated by the United Nations in the Partition Plan for the Jewish State. The village stood on a low limestone hill overlooking the shoreline of two small bays.[14] The water was supplied from a well in the eastern part of the village.[14] Some of the inhabitants were civil servants, working as policemen, custom officials and clerks at the Haifa Magistrates court.[14] A road suitable for auto-mobiles led to Haifa Highway.[14] The village was one of the most developed in the region.[14] Some residents of Tantura were involved in the Arab Revolt, and three had been killed in a skirmish with the British near the village. In 1948, on the eve of the Israeli War of Independence, the wealthier families fled to the safety of Haifa. Approximately 1,200 remained in the village, continuing to tend their fields, orchards, and ply their trade as fishermen.[14]
[edit] Military and civil command decisions
A decision was made on May 9, 1948 to "expel or subdue" the villages of Kafr Saba, al-Tira, Qaqun, Qalansuwa and Tantura.[15] On the 11 May 1948 Ben-Gurion convened the “Consultancy” the outcome of the meeting is confirmed in a letter to commanders of the Haganah Brigades telling them that the Arab legion's offensive should not distract their troops from the principle tasks:
"‘the cleansing of Palestine remained the prime objective of Plan Dalet” [16]
Tantura was ready to surrender in early May but not relinquish their arms . The Haganah was not interested in a surrender of Tantura.[17]
[edit] The attack
The British were in control of the Haifa port area until April 23, 1948.[18] The rest of the city was in the hands of the Carmeli Brigade of the Haganah commanded by Mordechai Maklef. After the fall of Haifa on 22 April 1947 some of the villages on the slopes of Mount Carmel became involved in attacks on Jewish traffic on the main road to Haifa. Consequently the attention of the commanders of the Alexandroni Brigade was turned to reducing the Mount Carmel pocket. Tantura was chosen as the starting point of this the "Coastal Clearing Operation", carried out by the Alexandroni Brigade of the Haganah. On the night of May 22-23, Tantura was attacked and occupied by the brigade's 33rd Battalion. The initial report spoke of dozens of villagers killed and 500 taken prisoner (300 adult males and 200 women and children).[19]
[edit] Aftermath
Most of the village inhabitants fled to the nearby town of Fureidis and Arab League controlled territory in the Triangle region near to what was to become the Green Line.[4] The women were taken to Fureidis.[20] On May 31, 1948, Bechor Shitrit, the Minister of Minority Affairs of the provisional Government of Israel, sought permission to expel the "Tantura evictees" women from Fureidis due overcrowding, lack of sanitation and the possibility of information being passed to other unconquered villages.[21]
A Ministry official, Ya’akov Epstein of Zichron Yaakov, who submitted a report after visiting Tantura shortly after the operation, reported seeing bodies "in the (village) outskirts, in the streets, in the alleys, in village houses," but said nothing of a massacre. In 1998, Yihiya Yihiya published a book on Tantura recording the names of 52 dead.[22]
The occupation of the village was followed by looting. as nearby settlers tried to make away with villagers property. Some of the looted items recovered by the Haganah included "one carpet, one gramophone ...one basket with cucumbers [and] one goat." The area also became a health hazard due to the human and animal corpses.[23]
The approximately 300 male Palestinian Arab prisoners of war were held on the beach before being transferred to Zichron Ya’akov police station[20] and put into labour battalions. [24]
[edit] Nahsholim and Dor
Kibbutz Nahsholim and Moshav Dor were built on land on the outskirts of al-Tantura.[4]
As the village of al-Tantura was situated on the ancient]] [[tel (archeological mound) of Dora the Naming Committee of the Jewish National Fund restored the Hebraic name Dor.[25] The moshav settlers initially moved into the abandoned Arab houses but the housing was found to be unsuitable. The Moshav moved out of al-Tantura and the old Arab village was bulldozed. The Moshav Dor built more suitable housing close to al-Tantura. Former residents of al-Tantura claim that when bulldozers tried to knock down the local saint's tomb of Sheik al-Majrami, the blades on the bulldozers broke.[26]
[edit] Massacre controversy
Tantura was the subject of a master's thesis by an Israeli student, Theodore Katz, in which he alleged that Israeli forces had killed 240 Arab civilians from the village of Tantura during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 (the word massacre however was never used). Although it was referred to as a massacre by other scholars.[27][24]
Katz, a student of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Haifa, originally received a grade of 97. Katz's claims were based on oral testimony and it was found that Katz had falsified testimony at 14 different places in his thesis.[28]Katz's presentation of the facts was disputed by Israeli historians such as Benny Morris[29] and Yoav Gelber [30] as well as veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade who were accused of these deeds.[28] Katz was sued for libel. After two days’ cross-examination in court, Katz signed a statement admitting that his research was falsified:
"After checking and re-checking the evidence," it read, "it is clear to me now, beyond any doubt, that there is no basis whatsoever for the allegation that the Alexandroni Brigade, or any other fighting unit of the Jewish forces, committed killing of people in Tantura after the village surrendered."
Katz’s mentor and close friend, the post-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé, continues to defended him.[31][32]
A planned excavation of a claimed grave was mentioned in 2004 but no excavation has been carried out.[29]
The case was made in the Katz debate that eyewitness statements made some time after the event were no substitute for contemporaneous “Documentary” evidence. However the “Katz interviews” of 20 Palestinians (some of whom were 5-7 years old in 1948) and 20 Israeli participants (some of who recanted there interviews although most didn’t) are still extant and independently verify the documentary evidence, in what some scholars have described as a massacre[27][31] According to historian Benny Morris, there is no proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura after the fighting. However Benny Morris does record that there was an instance of a rape of a women in the village and that there is evidence that the Alexandroni troops executed POWs also the CGS to OC Alexandroni of 1 June complained of acts of sabotage (habala) after the occupation of the village, this may be a euphemistic reference to a massacre.[22][33]
During the trial in December 2000, some of Katz’s evidence was shown to have been fabricated. In one instance, he claimed that a central witness, Abu Fahmi, had told him the army rounded up the villagers, lined them up against a wall and shot them. The court ordered Katz to hand over the tapes of his interviews and no such statement was found. On the contrary, Abu Fahmi stated repeatedly that the soldiers "did not murder the villagers after they surrendered".[20]
[edit] See also
- Tantura expulsion
- Tantura and the Katz controversy
- List of massacres committed prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
- List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
- List of villages depopulated during the Arab-Israeli conflict
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Benny Morris (2004): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, ISBN 0521009677, p. XVIII, village #176. Also gives the cause of depopulation.
- ^ Meron Benvenisti 2000 p.50
- ^ a b c d e Bashan Foundation.org
- ^ a b c Haifa District: Al-Tantura Town Statistics and Facts Palestine Remembered
- ^ Haifa District Stats from Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine (1970) Hadawi, Sami. The Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center
- ^ Abu-Sitta, Salman H. (2007) p.51
- ^ Lebanon Links.com
- ^ http://dor.huji.ac.il/periods_IR.html
- ^ http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/ebd/ebd106.htm
- ^ sites Underwater Excavations at Dor, Israel, To Be Resumed Sites and Photos.
- ^ Blackwell Synergy .com
- ^ http://www.napoleon-series.org/ins/scholarship98/c_palestine.html
- ^ Encyclopedia Judaica, Dor, p. 172, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1972
- ^ a b c d e f Meron Benvenisti (2000) p.135
- ^ Benny Morris (2004) p.246; Summary meeting of the Arab Affairs Advisor in Netanya 9 May 1948 IDF 6127/49//109
- ^ Ilan Pappé (2006) p. 128.
- ^ Benny Morris (2006) p. 247
- ^ UN Doc A/AC.21/UK/120 of 22/04/1948 UN Palestine Commission - Position in Haifa - Letter from United Kingdom
- ^ Benny Morris (2004) p. 247 unsigned short report on Tantura Operation, IDFA 922/75//949, and ya’akov B.’, in the name of the deputy OC ‘A’ company ‘Report on Operation Namal’ 26 May 1948, IDFA 6647/49//13.
- ^ a b c CAMERA.org
- ^ Benny Morris (2004). Shitrit to Ben-Gurion 31 May 1948 ISA MAM 302/48.
- ^ a b Benny Morris (2004) p 299-301
- ^ Benny Morris (2004) p. 247.
- ^ a b NC State University News Clips for May 15, 2002
- ^ Meron Benvenisti (2000) pp.19-25
- ^ Meron Benvenisti (2000) p.198
- ^ a b Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Spring, 2001), pp. 5-18: Al Wali The Tantura Massacre with eye witness accounts included from; Muhammad Abu Hana, Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Amr, Amina al-Masri, Farid Taha Salam, Musa 'Abn al-Fattah al-Khatib, 'Adil Muhammad al-'Ammuri, Mahmud Nimr Abd al-Mu'ti, Yusuf Salam, Muhammad Kamil al-Dassuki, Abn al-Razzaq Nasr, Yusra Abu Hana, Wurud Sa'id Salam and Sabira Abu Hana
- ^ a b Made-Up Massacre: The Tantura affair, in which post-Zionist Israel libels its own past Meyrav Wurmser. News Corporation Weekly Standard. 2001-09-10.
- ^ a b Jerusalem Report The Tantura ‘Massacre’ Affair By Benny Morris 4 february 2004, see also Benny Morris (2004) p. 299-301
- ^ Katz Dirrectory Documents gathered by the Censor on the Tantura Affairs quoted in Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948, 2006.
- ^ a b Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Spring, 2001), pp. 19-39: The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial by Ilan Pappe; With eye witness accounts from: Dan Vitkon, Yosef Graf, Salih 'Abn al-Rahman, Tuvia Lishansky Mordechai Sokoler, Ali 'Abd al-Rahman Dekansh, Najiah Abu Amr, Fawsi Mahmoud Tanj, Mustafa Masri
- ^ Ilan Pappé, (2006); p 113, 127,133, 155, 165, 183, 197, 203, 210, 211.
- ^ Ha’aretzSurvival of the Fittest by Ari Shavit
[edit] Bibliography
- Abu-Sitta, Salman H. (2007) The Return Journey, A Guide to the Depopulated and Present Palestinian Towns and Villages and Holy Sites Palestine Land Society: Stratford, London. ISBN 0-9549034-1-2
- Benvenisti, Meron. (2000) Sacred Landscape; The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. University of Californian Press ISBN 0-520-23422-7
- Benny Morris (2004): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University press ISBN 0-521-00967-7
- Pappé, Ilan (2006); “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” Oneworld Publication Limited. ISBN 13: 978-1-85168-467-0
[edit] External links
- Benny Morris on Katz controversy
- Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948 about Tantura events.
- Documents gathered by the Censor on Tantura Affairs quoted in Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948, 2006.
- Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Spring, 2001), pp. 5-18: Al Wali The Tantura Massacre
- Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, (Spring, 2001), pp. 19-39: The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial by Ilan Pappe
- Google Books Benvenisti, Meron. (2000) “Sacred Landscape; The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948”. University of Californian Press ISBN 0-520-23422-7 Limited preview
- Underwater archeology at Tantura Lagoon
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