Name meaning Hill Subdistrict Haifa Population 1140 (1945) Current locality Geva Carmel | Also spelled Dscheba, Jeba Palestine grid 146/228 Date of depopulation 24–26 July 1948 | |
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Jaba' (Arabic: جبع), also known as Gaba, or Geba, in historical writings, was a Palestinian Arab village in the Haifa Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on July 24, 1948 as part of Operation Shoter. It was located 18.5 km south of Haifa, near Carmel, and ca. 3.25 kilometers (2.02 mi) east of the Mediterranean Sea.
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Classic era
The village features prominently in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus. In the late 1st century BCE, Herod the Great had built the village for his veteran cavalry, and called it the city of horsemen.
Ottoman era
Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, like all of Palestine, in the 1596 tax registers, it was part of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jabal Atlit, part of the larger Sanjak of Lajjun. It had a population of 18 households, all Muslims. The inhabitants paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 7,800 akçe.
In 1859, the English Consul Rogers found the population to be 150 souls, with 18 feddans of cultivation.
In 1873, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) visited and found: “There are two closed rock tombs in the ledge south of the village, and a third with a courtyard 14 feet square, sunk 2 feet ; two doors lead into chambers. One has three loculi, one on each wall ; the other has two loculi and a recess 5 feet 6 inches, with two parallel graves under one arcosolium placed like kokim with the feet to the chamber. This is therefore a transitional example. (Compare Sheikh Ibreik.)
There are several caves north of the village, and another tomb at the head of the valley forming the recess in which the village stands."
In 1882, the SWP described it: "A small village in a recess on the hill-slope close to the plain ; the houses principally of stone. It has a good olive-yard on the west below the village, in which yard the Survey Camp was placed. The water-supply is from a well on the north-west, which has a wheel and troughs. The place seems ancient, having rock-cut tombs and caves.
Jaba' had an elementary school for boys, which was founded by the Ottomans in 1885.
British Mandate period
In the British Mandate of Palestine period, in the 1922 census of Palestine Jaba had a population of 523; all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 762; 2 Christians and the rest Muslim, in a total of 158 houses.
By 1945 this had increased to 1,140, all Muslims with a total of 7,012 dunams of land. Of this, 450 dunums were plantations or irrigable land, 4,255 were for cereals, while 60 dunams were classified built-up, (urban), land.
Mosaic remains, tombs cut into the rock, and other architectural features remain.
Israeli period
Today, the Israeli moshav, Geva Carmel, is built ca. one-half of a kilometer northwest of the old village site.