Qira was a Palestinian

Palestinian people

The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...

 village, located 23 kilometers southeast of Haifa

Haifa

Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

. In Canaan

Canaan

Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...

ite times, the town was known as Yokneam, and in Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 times as Cimona. Before its occupation by pre-state Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i forces on 1 March 1948, it was locally referred to as Qira wa Qamun (Qamun

Qamun

Qamun was a Palestinian village, located southeast of Haifa, adjacent to the neighbouring village of Qira.Thought to be the site of the Canaanite royal city of Jokneam, during Roman rule in Palestine millennia later, it was a city whose name is transcribed by Eusebius of Caesarea as Cammona, and...

 being its neighbouring village).

According to Ilan Pappe

Ilan Pappé

Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, and political activist...

 in The Israel/Palestine Question (1999), the 140 tenant farmers of Qira wa Qamun evacuated the village in March on the "friendly advice" of the local Haganah

Haganah

Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...

 intelligence officer at Yokneam, Yehuda Burstein. Benny Morris

Benny Morris

Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...

 notes that Burnstein received the orders for the evacuation from Yosef Weitz

Yosef Weitz

Yosef Weitz was the director of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish National Fund. From the 1930s, Weitz played a major role in acquiring land for the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine.-Biography:...

. The Haganah Intelligence Report attributes the flight to "fear and the influence of attacks in the area," which Morris notes is "not really the same thing." Subsequent to the depopulation of the village, Weitz and his colleagues from the Jewish National Fund

Jewish National Fund

The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a quasi-governmental, non-profit organisation...

 in the North, "decided to raze the tenants' houses, to destroy their crops, and to pay the evictees compensation."

Qira wa Qamun's inhabitants joined the first wave of the 1948 Palestinian exodus

1948 Palestinian exodus

The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...

, displaced prior to the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war

1948 Arab-Israeli War

The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...

. Today, the villagers and their descendants remain refugees

Palestinian refugee

Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...

.

At least 19 archaeological sites were located within the village's land area, the most renown of these being Tel Qiri and Tel Qamun.

The Jewish localities of Yokneam, Yokneam Illit

Yokneam Illit

Yokneam Illit , also Yoqne'am Illit and Jokneam Illit is a city southeast of Haifa in northern Israel. It is located in a hilly region of the lower Galilee, bordered by Highway 70 and Mount Carmel. Yokneam Illit is at the base of the Carmel Mountains and overlooks the Jezreel Valley, from Haifa...

 and kibbutz

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

 Hazorea

Hazorea

HaZore'a is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the west of the Jezreel Valley, it falls under the jurisdiction of Megiddo Regional Council...

 were established on the former lands of Qira.

See also

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

External links

• Welcome to Qira
• Qira from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
  Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
  Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center is an organization established in 1996. It is located at 4 Raja Street, Ramallah in the West Bank. The traditional manor that houses the centre was the former family home of Khalil Salem Salah, the mayor of Ramallah between 1947/1951, is now owned by the Palestinian...