Arabic جسير Subdistrict Gaza Population 1180 (1945) Current localities Menuha, Vardon | Name meaning "the little bridge" Palestine grid 128/118 Area 12,361 dunams | |
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Jusayr was a Palestinian Arab village in the Gaza Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on July 17, 1948 under Operation Barak or Operation Yo'av. It was located 35 km northeast of Gaza.
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History
Ceramics from the Byzantine era have been found here.
Ottoman era
In 1517, Jusayr was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine, and in 1596 the village appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Gaza under the Liwa of Gaza. It had a population of 60 household; an estimated population of 330. The whole population was Muslim. It paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards, fruit trees, goats, beehives, as well as on "occasional revenues"; a total of 12,180 Akçe.
In 1863 Victor Guérin visited the village, which he found to have 500 inhabitants, while an Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that the village had a population of 296, in a total of 119 houses, though the population count included men, only.
In 1883 the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as being an adobe village on flat ground.
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Jusayr had a population of 579 inhabitants, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 839 Muslims, in a total of 246 houses.
By 1945, Jusayr had a population of 1180 Muslims, with a total of 12,361 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 11,852 dunams were used for cereals, while 54 dunams were built-up land.
Jusayr had an elementary school for boys which was founded in 1937, and by 1945, it had an enrollment of 74 students.