page_title: Sarafand al-Amar
section_title: British Mandate era
hierarchical_section_title: Sarafand al-Amar / History / British Mandate era
caption_attribution_description: English: Ramla1945 1:250,000
context_page_description: Sarafand al-Amar was a Palestinian Arab village situated on the coastal plain of Palestine, about 5 kilometers northwest of Ramla. It had a population of 1,950 in 1945 and a land area of 13,267 dunams. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
context_section_description: In December 1918, after World War I but prior to the Mandatory Palestine, New Zealand soldiers from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade camped near the village massacred its inhabitants as retribution for the murder of a New Zealand soldier. Between 40 and 120 people are believed to have been killed in the massacre, and many houses in the village were burnt to the ground.
  In the British mandate period (1920–1948), the British Army established their largest military base in the Middle East near Sarafand al-Amar and built the village up significantly. The British Army also contracted the Palestine Electric Company for wired electric power. While the military installations had been fed by a high-tension line from 1925 onward, the village remained unconnected  The British also built a prison, under the name of Sarafand, for Palestinian nationalist activists next to the base.
  In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Sarafand al-Amar  had a population of 862; 861  Muslims and 1 Jew,  increasing in the 1931 census to 1183; 19 Christians and 1164 Muslims, in a total of 265 houses. During this period, Sarafand al-Amar was laid out in the shape of a rectangle and its houses were made of adobe.
  Sarafand al-Amar was the site of a popular shrine for Luqman al-Hakim (Luke the Wise). The village had two elementary schools, one for boys and one for girls. The boys' school was founded in 1921 and became a full elementary school in 1946-47 with an enrollment of 292 students. The girls' school was founded in 1947 and had an enrollment of 50 students. Adjacent to it was the al-Raja ("Hope") Orphanage set up for the children of Palestinians killed during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. In addition, Sarafand had a public hospital and an agricultural station.
  In  the 1945 statistics  the population consisted of 1,910 Muslims and 40 Christians. Agriculture was the main economic activity, with citrus being the main crop. In 1944-45, a total of 3,059 dunams were devoted to citrus and bananas and 4,012 dunams were allocated to grains; 1,655 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards, while 36 dunams were classified as built-up, urban areas. The orchards were irrigated from artesian wells, while the rest of the crops were rain-fed. Artesian wells also provided drinking water.
caption: Sarafand al-Amar 1945 1:250,000
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