Yibna

Infobox Former Arab villages in Palestine
name=Yibna


imgsize=
caption=
arname=يبنى
meaning=
altSp=Jabneel, Iamnia, Jamnia
district=jf
population=5,420
popyear=1945
area=59,554
areakm=
date=4 June 1948
cause=E
cause2=
curlocl=Yavne

Yibna ( _ar. يبنى, in Biblical times, "Jabneel", in Roman times, "Iamnia", "Jamnia", or "Yavne", and in the Crusades, "Ibelin") was a Palestinian village of over 5,420 inhabitants, located 15 kilometers southwest of Ramla.cite web|title=Welcome to Yiba|publisher=Palestine Remembered|accessdate=2007-12-04|url=http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/Yibna/]

Though the village was defended by the Egyptian Army, it was overtaken by Israeli forces on 4 June 1948 during the second stage of Operation Barak. Its inhabitants were expelled and became refugees.

A mosque built in 1386 and three of the hundreds of houses that made up the village survived its subsequent destruction.

The Israeli localities of Yavne, Bayt Rabban, Kefar ha-Nagid, Ben Zakkay, Tzofiyya and Bayt Gamli'el lie upon the lands of the former village.

Ibrahim al-Makadmeh and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a political spokesperson for Hamas, were from Yibna. Yousef an-Najjar, one of Fatah's founders was also born in Yibna.

Walid Khalidi describes Yibna's remaining structures as follows:

"A railroad crosses the village. The dilapidated mosque and minaret, together with a shrine, still remain. At least two of the remaining houses are used by Jewish families and one by an Arab family. One of the houses occupied by Jews is made of concrete; from its flat roof rise an electricity-post and a TV antenna. The other has a gabled roof. The house in which the Arab family lives is quite small and deteriorating; it has a tiled, slanted roof. Nearby is a nonfunctioning well with a circular mouth. A half-cylindrical stone structure is built on a segment of the well and is enclosed by a stone wall at one end."

An archeological dig in modern day Yavne remarked on three wall segments in Square C that "should probably be ascribed to the buildings of the Arab village Yibna that existed until 1948," alongside "An unguentarium dating to the Early Roman period..."cite journal|title=Yavne|author=Aviva Buchennino|journal=Hadashot Arkheologiyot|publisher=Israeli Antiquities Authority|date=08/01/2006|accessdate=2007-12-08|url=http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.asp?search=&id=293&mag_id=111] In Square A, where artifacts from the Byzantine and Roman eras were found, it is noted that "part of the Arab village at Yibna also extended on top of the cemetery and refuse pits from the Byzantine period to the foot of the tell."

References