page_title: Bayt Mahsir
section_title: 1948 and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Bayt Mahsir / History / 1948 and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: HaMasrek nature reserve near Beit Meir, Israel.
context_page_description: Bayt Mahsir was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 10, 1948 by the Harel Brigade of Operation Makkabi. It was located 9 km west of Jerusalem.
context_section_description: Already on April 12, 1948, while Bayt Mahsir was still in Palestinian hands, the Yishuv leadership made plans to populate it with Yishuv. During the April–May fighting in the Jerusalem Corridor (operations 'Nachshon', 'Harel', 'Yevusi' and 'Maccabi'), Palmach units more or less systematically levelled Qastal, Qalunya and Khulda, and largely or partly destroyed the villages of Beit Surik, Biddu, Shuafat, Beit Iksa, Bayt Mahsir and Sheikh Jarrah. Bayt Mahsir was depopulated on May 10–May 11, 1948, after a military assault by Yishuv forces. In August 1948, the new Israeli leadership started finalising plans for resettling Bayt Mahsir land.
  In 1992 Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi noted that some houses from Bayt Mahsir were still standing in the moshav of Beit Meir, identifying two large homes built of limestone that were larger than those built after 1948. He also noted that "The remains of a flour mill, a metal machine with flywheels fitted over a stone structure, can still be seen. There is a wild forest of old trees on the eastern edge of the village site, on top of the mountain. The tomb of al-'Ajami, together with other graves, are among the trees." The Maqam al-'Ajami, or 'tomb of al-'Ajami', was examined by Andrew Petersen in 1994. It is located southeast of the village site, on a hill in the present Hamasrek Nature Reserve. The name is identified by Tawfiq Canaan as coming from Ahmad al-'Ajami, called the Persian, though Canaan doubted that he was of Persian origin. The representative from the Palestine Antiquities Department dated it to the 17th century in 1947, a date which Petersen find "not inconsistent" with the architecture of the building. Two books have been published about Bayt Mahsir, one in 1988, and one in 2002.
caption: Maqam al-'Ajami, in 2019
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