page_title: Mi'ar
section_title: British Mandate era
hierarchical_section_title: Mi'ar / History / British Mandate era
caption_attribution_description: English: alestinian village of Mi'ar being blown up by the British in 1938. It was completely destroyed, homes dynamited.
context_page_description: Mi'ar, was a Palestinian village located 17.5 kilometers east of Acre. Its population in 1945 was 770. The Crusaders referred to it as "Myary". By the 19th century, during Ottoman rule, it was a large Muslim village. The village was a center of Palestinian Arab rebel operations during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine against British rule and consequently the village was completely dynamited by the British. Mi'ar was later restored, but it was depopulated by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Jewish communities of Atzmon, Ya'ad and Manof are located on former village land.
context_section_description: British forces drove out the Ottomans in 1917, during World War I, and the British Mandate of Palestine was established in 1920. In the 1922 British census, Mi'ar had a population of 429 Muslims. The population increased to 543, still all Muslim, in the 1931 census and the inhabitants lived in a total of 109 houses.
  A number of Mi'ar's residents participated in 1936–1939 Arab revolt against British rule and mass Jewish immigration in Palestine, and the village became a center of rebel operations in the Galilee. The rebels often opened fired on British troops passing near Mi'ar, damaged roads in the vicinity to render them impassable by the British authorities, cut electrical cables, and planted landmines to hit British vehicles. One of the authorities' controversial methods of suppressing the revolt was the blowing up of houses in a village where there was support for rebels. On 26 October 1938, two British battalions launched a raid against Mi'ar and began dynamiting the large houses of the village. They then demanded Mi'ar's mukhtar (headman) to issue a call to the village's rebels to surrender their rifles or else the dynamiting would continue. No rifles were surrendered and the British resumed their dynamiting of the village's homes. Mi'ar was entirely destroyed for its alleged support of the rebels. A New York Times reporter present during the destruction wrote, "When the [British] troops left, there was little else remaining of this once busy village except a pile of mangled masonry."
  The village was rebuilt and in the 1945 statistics, the population of Mi'ar grew to 770, all Muslims. A total of 2,878 dunams of village land was used for cereals, while 113 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards.
caption: Mi'ar being blown up by the British in 1938.
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