Arabic رعنة Subdistrict Hebron Population 190 (1945) | Name meaning The spur of a Hill Palestine grid 138/119 Area 6.925 dunams | |
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Ra'na (Arabic: رعنة) was a village located approximately 26 km northwest of Hebron. It was occupied by the Israeli army during Operation Yo'av in October 1948. It was one of 16 villages in the Hebron district that were depopulated.
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History
During the rule of the Ottoman empire, Edward Robinson passed by in 1838, and reported that the fields of Ra'na were planted with tobacco and cotton.
In 1863 Victor Guérin described it as a "village now reduced to a few huts, but that once had been much more considerable, judging by two beautiful wells dug in the rock and by a number of great stones scattered here and there". An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that Ra'na had 8 houses and a population of 30, though the population count included men only.
In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Ra'na as a village built of stone and adobe, and it had a pool and gardens.
British Mandate era
Ra'na was classified as hamlet by the Palestine Index Gazetteer. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Ra'ana had a population of 126 inhabitants, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 150, still all Muslim, in a total of 36 inhabited houses.
In 1945 the population of Ra'na was 190, all Muslims. In 1944/45 a total of 5,882 dunums of land was planted with cereals, while 112 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Grain was the dominant crop, but during the final year of the British Mandate of Palestine, the villagers also grew grapes, carob and olives. 14 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) areas.
1948, and after
The village was attacked by the Giv'ati Brigade on 22/23 October 1948. Those villagers who had not already fled were expelled and the village destroyed.
The settlement of Gal On was established in 1946 on what were traditionally village land.
The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi describes that the site of the village in 1992: "The site is fenced in with barbed wire and is overgrown in part by cactuses, especially where there is limestone soil, and by carob trees. No houses or rubble remains."