Kawkaba (), known to the Crusaders as Coquebel, was a Palestinian Arab village that was occupied by Israel during Operation Yoav during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and depopulated.

Location

The village was 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.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area of Kawkaba experienced a significant process of settlement decline due to nomadic pressures on local communities. The residents of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, but the land continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages.

In 1838, Edward Robinson noted Kaukaba as a Muslim village, located in the Gaza district.

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 PEF'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. increasing in the 1931 census to 522, still all Muslims, in 121 houses.

thumb|Kawkaba 1931 1:20,000

thumb|Kawkaba 1945 1:20,000

Kawkaba shared an elementary school with the villages of Bayt Tima and Hulayqat. Its houses were made of adobe and cement, and its shops were located at the village center, on the western side of the road. On its eastern site were two water sources: a spring and a 70-meter deep well. The villagers engaged in rainfed agriculture, cultivating grain and winter and summer vegetables. Towards the end of the British Mandate period they also cultivated fruits, such as figs and grapes, on all their land expect to the west. while 40 dunams were built-up areas.

1948 and after

The village that was captured by Israel during Operation Yoav during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The fall of the village was preceded by the events at nearby Burayr; where the Haganah Oded Brigade apparently executed a large number of military age Palestinians. The Kawkaba villages had offered to surrender to the Yishuv's forces but the Haganah drove out the last of the inhabitants on the 27/28 May 1948. The village was on the front line between the Israeli and Egyptian armies through the summer of 1948 and appears to have changed hands several times.

Following the war the area was incorporated into the State of Israel and in 1950 the moshav of Kokhav Michael was founded on village land, southeast of the village site.

References

Bibliography

  • Kawkaba Palestine Remembered
  • Kawkaba, Zochrot
  • Survey of Western Palestine, Map 20: IAA, Wikimedia commons
  • Kawkaba from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center