Wadi Ara, Haifa
| Wadi Ara | |
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Old Arab house of Wadi Ara, now part of Kibbutz Barkai
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 Wadi Ara
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| Arabic | وادي عارة |
| Name meaning | Khurbet ez Zebadneh=The ruin if the people of Zebdah |
| Subdistrict | Haifa |
| Coordinates | 32°28′31.37″N 35°01′54.97″E / 32.4753806°N 35.0319361°ECoordinates: 32°28′31.37″N 35°01′54.97″E / 32.4753806°N 35.0319361°E |
| Palestine grid | 153/209 |
| Population | 230 (1945) |
| Area | 9,795 dunams 9.8 km² |
| Date of depopulation | February 27, 1948 |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Fear of being caught up in the fighting |
| Current localities | Ein Iron, Barkai |
Wadi Ara (Arabic: وادي عارة) was an Arab village located 38.5 km south of the city of Haifa. It is named after the nearby stream that is known in Arabic as Wadi 'Ara. The village was particularly small with a population of 230 and a land area of approximately 9,800 dunums.
The archaeological site Tel al-Asawir was located northwest of the village site. Burial caves dating from the fourth to the second millennium B.C. were found there when the site was excavated in 1953.
The Muslim geographer Ibn Khurdadhbi (d. 912) described it as a stopping place on the road between al-Lajjun and Qalansuwa.
In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described it a small hamlet known as Khirbat al-Zabadna.
In the British Mandate of Palestine- period, the village was classified as a hamlet in the Palestine Index Gazetteer. In the 1922 census of Palestine Wadi Arah had a population of 68; all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 81; still all Muslim, in a total of 18 houses.
In 1945 Wadi Ara had a population of 230, with a total of 9,795 dunams of land. Of this, Arabs used 6,400 dunums of land for cereals, while 1,446 dunams were classified as uncultivable land.
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the village was successfully defended by Arab Liberation Army volunteers and Iraqi forces patrolling the nearby city of Tulkarm. All of the land the Iraqi Army controlled in Palestine including Wadi Ara was handed over to Jordan. Jordan under the command of King Abdullah I then ceded the entire Wadi Ara region to Israel on May 3, 1949. In March 1949 as the Iraqi forces withdrew from Palestine and handed over their positions to the smaller Jordanian legion, 3 Israeli brigades maneuvered into threatening positions in Operation Shin-Tav-Shin in a form of coercive diplomacy. The operation allowed Israel to renegotiate the cease fire line in the Wadi Ara area of the Northern West Bank in a secret agreement reached on 23 March 1949 and incorporated into the General Armistice Agreement. The green line was then redrawn in blue ink on the southern map to give the impression that a movement in the green line had been made.
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Wikipedia