Arabic دير مُحيسن Palestine grid 143/137 | Current localities Beqoa' Date of depopulation 6 April 1948 | |
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Cause(s) of depopulation Military assault by Yishuv forces | ||
Dayr Muhaysin (Arabic: دير محيسن, Hebrew: דיר מוחיסין) was a Palestinian village in the Ramle Subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine, located 12 km southeast of Ramla and 4 km west of Latrun.
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History
It has been suggested by the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine that Dayr Muhaysin was one of the Crusader villages which was given by the 12th century King Baldwin V as a fief to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Ottoman era
In 1863, Victor Guérin found a village of some twenty half destroyed and deserted houses, under a large mimosa tree.
According to Socin, it is possibly the place mentioned in an official Ottoman village list from around 1870, showing it had 10 houses and a population of 29, though the population count included men only.
In 1883, the "Survey of Western Palestine" found at Dayr Muhaysin: "Traces of a former village; a conspicuous white mound, with cisterns and caves; a large site, also known as Umm esh Shukf."
British Mandate era
In the 1931 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Deir Muheisin had a population of 113; all Muslims, in a total of 28 houses.
In 1945, the village had a population of 460 Muslims, while the total land area was 10,008 dunams (equivalent to the Greek stremma or English/American acre), according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 45 dunams were plantations or irrigated, 7,909 for cereals, while 72 dunams were classified as built-up public areas.
1947–1948 war, and aftermath
In December 1947 the village was evacuated. The Jewish Haganah paramilitary force paved an alternative route from Al-Masmiyya to Latrun, in order not to pass through the Palestinian Arab city of Ramla but the alternative route passed near the village. In the first month of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine there were attacks on Jewish transportation. In these attacks two high Jewish commanders were killed and according to Israeli historian Yoav Gelber, fear from acts of revenge led the villagers to temporarily evacuate.
The village was captured on April 6, 1948 during Operation Nachshon. The operational orders were to treat all Arab villages on the Khulda – Jerusalem corridor as "enemy assembly of jump off places", and such villages were to be destroyed and the villagers expelled. Dayr Muhaysin, Khulda and Saydun were the three first target villages.
In 1951, the Israeli settlement of Beko'a was established on village land, northwest of the village site.