Khirbat al-Sarkas

Infobox Former Arab villages in Palestine
name=Khirbat al-Sarkas


imgsize=
caption=
arname=خربة السركس
meaning=lit. "The ruins of the Circassians"
altSp=Khirbet as Sarkas
district=hf
population=383
popyear=1931
area=?
areakm=
date=20 - 22 April 1948
cause=E
cause2=
cause3=
curlocl=Gan Shemu'el, Talmey El'azar

Khirbat al-Sarkas ( _ar. خربة السركس) was a village in Palestine, located 42 kilometres south of Haifa. It was founded by Circassians from Russia who were expelled from their country by the armies of the Czar in the 19th century.cite web|title=Welcome to Khirbat al-Sarkas|publisher=Palestine Remembered|accessdate=2007-12-18|url=http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/al-Sarkas,-Khirbat/]

Though the Arab Higher Command had ordered the evacuation of the village's women and children three times prior to April 1948, the villagers did not leave.cite book|title="The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited"|author=Benny Morris|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2004|isbn=0-521-00967-7|page=245] Described by Benny Morris as "a friendly village", it was nonetheless one of the villages depopulated at the order of the Israeli Haganah, per their policy to clear the coastal plain of Arab villages in the lead up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The women and children left between 20 April and 22 April 1948, and the men a few days later.

ee also

*List of villages depopulated during the Arab-Israeli conflict

References

=References=