Arabic دير رفات Date of depopulation 18 July 1948 | Name meaning from personal name Palestine grid 146/131 Current locality Givat Shemesh | |
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Cause(s) of depopulation Military assault by Yishuv forces | ||
Dayr Rafat was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict. It was located 26 km west of Jerusalem. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by the Harel Brigade.
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History
In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Dayr Rafat as a small hamlet situated on a ridge with a spring to the west.
British Mandate era
In the 1931 census, there were 218 people living in Dayr Rafat.
In 1945 the village had a population of 430 inhabitants; 330 Muslims and 100 Christians. with a total of 13,242 dunums of land. Of this, 216 dunams were for irrigable land or plantations, 10,563 for cereals, while 10 dunams were built-up land.
The village had a mosque named for al-Hajj Hasan and three khirbas.
1948 Arab–Israeli War
Dayr Rafat, along with four other villages, were overtaken by the Israeli Harel Brigade on 17–18 July 1948 in Operation Dani. The villages had been on the front line since April 1948 and most of the inhabitants of these villages had already left the area. Many of those who stayed fled when Israeli forces attacked and the few who remained at each village were expelled.