Karatiyya

Karatiyya was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with the rest of Palestine, and by the 1596 tax records it was named Karta, a village in the nahiya of Gaza, part of Sanjak of Gaza. It had a population of 46 Muslim households, an estimated 253 persons. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, fruit, vineyards, beehives, and goats; a total of 5,830 akçe.[15]

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area of Karatiyya experienced a significant process of settlement decline due to nomadic pressures on local communities. The residents of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, but the land continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages.[16]

In 1838 Edward Robinson noted it as Kuratiyeh, a Muslim village in the Gaza district.[17] He further noted a ruined tower of "modern" date, built partly of (adobe) bricks; and a few ancient columns lying about.[18]

In 1863 Victor Guérin found it to be a small village with many houses demolished. To the north of this hamlet, on a nearby hill, were huge sections of walls and the remains of a square tower, three quarters destroyed, called "El-Kala'", or "the Castle". South of the village was a maqām, decorated with two ancient grey-white marble columns.[19] An Ottoman village list of about 1870 indicated 73 houses and a population of 196, though the population count included men, only.[20][21]

In the 19th century, a ruined tower stood atop a mound just outside the village which was built in an open plain.[22][18]

Karatiyya 1930 1:20,000

Karatiyya 1945 1:250,000

Karatiyya 1948 1:20,000

During the British Mandate of Palestine period in the 20th century, the village houses were built of adobe brick and it relied on the nearby town of al-Faluja for medical, commercial, and administrative services. Karatiyya itself, had a mosque, a grain mill, and an elementary school—the latter was built in 1922 and had an enrollment of 128 students in the mid-1940s. Domestic water was supplied by two wells dug within the village and the primary agricultural crops were grain and prickly pears.[6]

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Karatiya had a population of 736 Muslims,[23] increasing in the 1931 census to 932, still all Muslims, in 229 houses.[24]

In the 1945 statistics Karatiyya had a population of 1,370 Muslims,[3] with a total of 13,709 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[4] Of this, 321 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 12,928 for cereals,[25] while 48 dunams were built-up land.[26]

As a part of a new policy the Haganah blew up a house in Karatiyya on the night of December 9, 1947,[27] the orders to the Givati Brigade who executed the order[28] had been for "two houses".[29]

Karatiyya was captured by the Israeli Army's 89th Mechanized Battalion, commander Moshe Dayan, on July 18, 1948, as part of Operation Death to the Invader. Its inhabitants fled upon their arrival, according to Dayan.[30] According to Benny Morris, the village "was harassed by machine-gun fire and abandoned by its inhabitants".[31] Israeli forces intended to link their northern territory with that held by Israeli forces in the Negev, but succeeded only partially, only taking control of Hatta and Karatiyya. After it was stormed by Dayan's troops he controversially withdrew them leaving a Givati infantry company to hold the position.[32] A fierce battle ensued between them and the Egyptian Army who got as far as the village outskirts. When two Egyptian tanks were on the verge of breaking the Israeli defenses from the south, a unit hiding behind a wall of prickly pear cacti, armed with anti-tank weapons "changed the course of the battle", according to Haganah accounts.[6]

Following the war the area was incorporated into the State of Israel. On August 20, 1948, Ben-Gurion together with Yehoshua Eshel, presented a plan for 32 new Jewish settlements on newly depopulated Palestinian villages, with a settlement named Otzem or Komemiyut proposed for Karatiyya.[33] Three villages were eventually founded on village land; Komemiyut in 1950 and Revaha in 1953, close to the village site. Nehora, established in 1956, is partly on village land, and partly on land belonging to al-Faluja.[5]

The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described Karatiyya in 1992: "Piles of debris are scattered on the site, and a destroyed cemetery (partially hidden among eucalyptus trees) can be seen. An agricultural road runs through it. Grain and alfalfa are grown by Israeli farmers on the site and surrounding lands."[5]