Kawkaba
| Kawkaba | |
|---|---|
 Kawkaba
|
|
| Arabic | كوكبا |
| Name meaning | Star, or mountain, or donjon |
| Also spelled | Kaukaba |
| Subdistrict | Gaza |
| Coordinates | 31°37′51″N 34°39′46″E / 31.63083°N 34.66278°ECoordinates: 31°37′51″N 34°39′46″E / 31.63083°N 34.66278°E |
| Palestine grid | 117/115 |
| Population | 680 (1945) |
| Area | 8,542 dunams |
| Date of depopulation | 12 May 1948 |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Influence of nearby town's fall |
| Current localities | Kokhav Michael |
Kawkaba (Arabic: كوكبا), known to the Crusaders as Coquebel, was a Palestinian Arab village that was captured by Israel during Operation Yoav during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and depopulated.
The village was situated on an uneven stretch of red-brown soil on the southern coastal plain. It lay on the highway constructed by the British during World War II, which paralleled the coastal highway.
The site was known during the Crusades as Coquebel. Kawkaba contained an archaeological site with a pool, cisterns, the foundations of buildings, columns, severed capitals. North of it was Khirbat Kamas, which was identified as the Crusader Camsa and which yielded some archaeological artifacts.
Kawkaba was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with the rest of Palestine, and by 1596 it was known as Kawkab, and had a population of 88. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, sesame, fruit trees and vineyards.
In 1863 Victor Guérin found that the village has a population of five hundred inhabitants. In the interior of a oualy dedicated to Sheikh Mohammed he observed mutilated fluted white marble column, next to a Corinthian capital. At the well, he noted two barrels, also ancient columns, one with white marble, the second gray granite, which were, he thought, exhumed in that area and did not come from elsewhere.
An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed Kokabe with a population of 72, in 20 houses, though the population count included men only.
In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described it as a small adobe village, with a well to the west and a pool to the north. The village had a rectangular layout along the above-mentioned road, and expanded north-south alongside it.
...
Wikipedia