Burayr

The village was spread on uneven land in the southern coastal plain. The valley of the hall extended across its eastern end. There was an internal public road linking the towns of the coastal plain to Gaza, and it passed to the east of the village, connecting it to areas to the north and south of it. This public road intersected with the Fallujah road? General Majdal (which extends from east to west) and passes about 9 kilometers north of the village. It has been proven that Brier is the Buriron mentioned in Byzantine sources in the year 1596. Brier was a village in the Gaza district (Gaza District) and had 1,155 people. It paid taxes on a number of crops, such as wheat, barley, and fruit, in addition to other elements of production, such as goats and beehives.

 In the year 1838, the American Bible scholar Edward Robinson found Berber (a prosperous village in the center of the plain. It had a waterwheel on which tractors rode). Forty years later, Berber was described as a large village with a waterwheel to the east of it, a pond to the north, and a garden to the south. Its shape was almost circular, although the locations of its houses (mostly built of brick) were irregular. During the Mandate period, the village expanded westward toward a hill slightly higher than it, and maintained its agricultural lands on other sides. The residents of Brier were Muslims and had a mosque in its centre. Also in the center of the village, the market was a dispensary and a grain mill. Two schools were established, one for girls and the other for Lenin, in 1920, and there were 241 students of both sexes in 1947. There were three wells inside the village that supplied its residents with water for domestic use. At the end of the mandate period, the village residents dug artesian wells.

 In the 1940s, the village’s economy revived when the British Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) found oil on the outskirts of Berber and drilled a well located a kilometer from the village to the north. Market activity also increased as a result of a weekly market every Wednesday that attracted residents of neighboring villages and Bedouins. The village residents worked mainly in agriculture (rain-fed and irrigated), and some of them also raised animals. They grew grains, fruits, especially citrus fruits, grapes, figs, and vegetables. In 1944/1945, a total of 43,319 dunams were allocated to grains and 409 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards. Brier was built over an archaeological site where the remains of ancient construction were clearly visible. In addition, there were four archaeological sites in the vicinity (Khirbet Shaarata, Tell al-Mashnaqa, Khirbet al-Marshan, and Khirbet Umm Qass).

Occupying the village and ethnically cleansing it

A dangerous infiltration into Berber occurred in the first weeks of the war, on January 29, 1948. A correspondent for the Palestine newspaper wrote that the Zionist forces used five armored vehicles in the attack, which was repelled without causing any casualties. A similar attack occurred the following month, on the afternoon of February 14. This time – the newspaper reported – a Jewish convoy passed Brier and exchanged fire with its defenders, then fled. The next day two village residents were wounded when British soldiers forcibly removed a checkpoint erected at the entrance to the village.

 The first step in the Zionist occupation of Brier took place with the establishment of a military colony just outside the village. This colony, Birur Hail, was established on the top of a hill less than a mile away from Brier, on April 20, 1948. A New York Times correspondent reported that “when the Arab residents of Brier woke up, they found the Jews erecting prefabricated houses and building a defense wall and a watchtower.” .) These Jews were veterans of the British Army during World War II who immigrated to Palestine. Some village residents opened fire on them, but by noon the houses were firmly in place. Three weeks after this date, during the night of May 12-13, the Palmach’s Hanegev (Captain) Brigade attacked the village, in coordination with Operation Barak, which was carried out by the Givati ​​Brigade (see Arab Battani al-Gharbi, Gaza District). It is stated in the book (History of the Haganah), which calls Brier (the village of butchers) without any explanation, that the village was occupied (with one blow).

The village today

Scattered cactus plants grow on the site, as well as some sycamore trees and lotus plants. One can see the remains of houses, including a small part of a cement wall between some eucalyptus trees at the entrance to one of the houses, and some of the village streets are still visible. The lands surrounding the site are cultivated.

Zionist settlements on village lands

The Zionists established on its lands the colony of Beru Hail in 1948, the colony of Talayim and Giltz in 1950, the colony of Sde David in 1955, and the colony of Zohar in 1956.