Arabic خربة السركس Subdistrict Haifa Area ? dunams Date of depopulation 15 April 1948 | Also spelled Khirbet as Sarkas Palestine grid 146/205 Local time Monday 7:35 AM Current localities Gan Shmuel, Talmei Elazar | |
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Name meaning lit. "The ruins of the Circassians" Weather 15°C, Wind SW at 16 km/h, 85% Humidity | ||
Khirbat al-Sarkas (Arabic: خربة السركس) was a village in Palestine, located 42 kilometres south of Haifa. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
History
The village was founded by Circassians from Russia who were expelled from their country by the armies of the Czar in the 19th century, approximately 1860. The village was abandoned by the Circassians because of a Malaria epidemic. It was then settled by local Muslim Arabs.
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kherbet al-Sharkas had a population of 74; all Muslims, increasing sharply in the 1931 census to 383, still all Muslim, in a total of 80 houses.
Though the Arab Higher Command had ordered the evacuation of the village's women and children three times prior to April 1948, the villagers did not leave. Described by Benny Morris as "a friendly village", it was nonetheless one of the villages depopulated at the order of the Israeli Haganah, per their policy to clear the coastal plain of Arab villages in the lead up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The women and children left between 20 April and 22 April 1948, and the men a few days later.