NITĀF – JERUSALEM DISTRICT
31°50′15″N / 35°4′1″E
1948: Population 46; Houses 4
Post 1948: In 1948, the Haganah and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) agreed with Nitāf residents that they would temporarily evacuate their village and move to the nearby Abu Ghosh until fighting in the area ceased. After the war, however, they were not allowed to return, and instead remained in Abu Ghosh. In 1949, as part of the Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan, the majority of village land became part of the Demilitarized Zone. In 1982 the Nataf communal settlement was established on 47 acres (190 dunams) purchased from the Ibrahim family, originally from Abu Ghosh, who had built Nitāf’s four houses at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Ibrahim family waged a legal battle against the Israel Lands Administration, and in the 1980s they reached an agreement in which their rights to part of Nitāf’s land were acknowledged; the family gave up the rights on the rest of the land, having received substitute land in Abu Ghosh.7
Today: A large, single-story stone house stands open above the road, and on the slopes below to the west stand the wall and arch of a former home, the demolished rubble left where it fell. The site of the village is within the JNF Kfira Forest.
Official Israeli name: Hurbat Nataf (“Nataf Ruin”)