Az-Zakariyya

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az-Zakariyya
Arabic	زكرية
Name Meaning	"Zachariah"
Also Spelled	al-Zakariya
District	Hebron
Population	1,180 (1945)
Jurisdiction	15,320 dunams (15.3 km²)
Date of depopulation	June 9th, 1950
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Jewish forces
Current localities	Kfar Zekharya

Az-Zakariyya or Zakaria (Arabic: زكرية‎) was a Palestinian Arab village 25km northwest from the city of Hebron (al-Khalil) in the Judean Mountains that was depopulated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is located on a hill approximately 275 meters above sea level. The streams of Wadi Ajjur and al-Sarara were located a few kilometers north of the village. The village had a population of 1,180 on 15,320 dunums in 1945. The village was named in honor of the monotheistic prophet Zachariah.

[edit] History

According to biblical sources the king David fought Goliath at the site of modern Zakariyya. It became a town in the Roman province Syria Palaestina in which it took the name Caper Zacharia.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the village was defended by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab Liberation Army and local militiamen. They were defeated and Zakariyya fell to Israeli forces during Operation Yoav on October 23, 1948. Zakariyya remained mostly intact but its population was forced to flee on June 9, 1950 on the orders of Yosef Weitz and the village became the property of the Jewish National Fund. The Israeli moshav Zekharya was built on the village's land and is populated mostly by Kurdish or Ukrainian Jews. Most of the former inhabitants were settled in the Dheisheh and al-Aroub refugee camps near Bethlehem, although a few remained as internal refugees in Israel, primarily in the city of Ramla.