Zarnuqa

The village stood on flat land on the central coastal plain, linked by a secondary road to a highway that led to Ramla. In the late nineteenth century, Zarnuqa was a village built of adobe bricks with gardens and cactus hedges around it. All of the people living in Zarnuqa were Muslims. The village was laid out in a trapezoidal shape, with the western side making up the long base of the trapezoid. Construction proceeded at a fast pace in the final years of the Mandate as a result of the economic boom. Zarnuqa had a clinic and a boys' primary school that was founded in 1924; in 1942 it became a full elementary school, and had an enrollment of 252 pupils by the mid-1940s. It offered students training in agronomy, including the raising of poultry and bee-keeping, on a 6-dunum land annex. A girls' elementary school was established in 1943, with an initial enrollment of sixty-five students.

The main pillar of the village economy was agriculture, which was based on fruit, especially citrus, cultivation. Citrus and other fruit trees ringed Zarnuqa on all sides and were irrigated from wells; the trees were most numerous in the north and northwest, where the wells had been bored. In 1944/ 45 a total of 2,070 dunums was devoted to citrus and bananas and 2,266 dunums were allocated to cereals; 1,189 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. A weekly market was held in the village on Saturdays and served as an outlet for merchants from Jaffa, Lydda, and Ramla.

Occupation and Ethnic Cleansing

According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, Israeli soldiers from the Giv’ati Brigade occupied the nearly abandoned village on 27 May 1948, during Operation Barak. Atrocities committed during the occupation were documented in a letter to Al HaMishmar, the newspaper of the leftist Mapam party, by someone informed by a soldier who participated in the operation:

“The soldier told me how one of the troops opened the door of a house and fired a Sten gun burst at an elderly man, a woman, and a child, killing them instantly. He described how Arabs were rounded up and left to stand in the sun all day, hungry and thirsty, until they handed over 40 rifles. The villagers claimed they had no weapons. Eventually, they were expelled toward the village of Binna.”

At the time, The New York Times reported Israeli sources stating that Zarnuqa and al-Qubayba were occupied after four hours of fighting. Morris notes that Zarnuqa had maintained good neighborly relations with the Yishuv, yet its houses were looted and vandalized by soldiers and nearby settlers after its occupation. The village was completely destroyed in June.

In August, the neighboring Kibbutz Shiller submitted a request to the Jewish settlement authorities for permanent transfer of Zarnuqa’s lands to the kibbutz as part of its "land quota." Morris does not confirm whether the request was granted, but notes that new immigrants were settled on the site of the destroyed village on 27 May 1949.

The Village Today

Israeli settlement housing dominates the site. Mulberry trees and cactus plants grow in the area. A few of the original village houses remain; some are occupied by Israeli Jews, while others are fenced off and used as storage facilities. One fenced house, made of concrete, features a large roofed veranda supported by two columns. The surrounding lands are now used for Israeli agriculture.

Zionist Settlements on Village Lands

In late 1948, the settlement of Zarnuqa was established on the village site. It is now a suburb of Rehovot, which had originally been founded in 1890. Later, the Gan Shlomo settlement, established in 1927, expanded to include part of Zarnuqa’s lands. The Giv’at Brenner settlement (est. 1928) and Gat Rimon settlement (est. 1933) also expanded onto the village lands. Today, both are integrated into the urban outskirts of Rehovot.