Bnei Darom colony

Bnei Drom is a religious moshav located in central occupied Palestine, near the Mediterranean coast. As of 2021, the population was approximately 950 settlers.

Bnei Darom was established in 1949 by members of the Gar’in Telivot Kfar Darom group, who had been forced to leave the kibbutz of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip after it was captured by the Egyptian army during the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. They were later joined by another group called Gar’in Morasha from the United States. However, most of the American group were not prepared for the communal lifestyle of a moshav shitufi and eventually left, with some forming Beit Hazon. Originally affiliated with the Hapoel HaMizrachi party, Bnei Darom joined the Religious Kibbutz Movement as a moshav shitufi in 2007.

According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, Bnei Darom was established on land belonging to the village of Isdud. However, Andrew Petersen states that it was built on land that had belonged to the depopulated Palestinian village of ‘Arab Suqrir, and mentions the ruins of a khan (caravanserai) located within a tree-shaded park near a modern water tower.

The remains of the khan were first described in 1863 by Victor Guérin, who wrote:

“These ruins belong to a khan now in ruins, measuring 60 paces in length and 17 in width. It contains a cistern and a small, overturned storehouse that has not yet been destroyed. At the bottom of the mound covered with its ruins, to the east, I noticed a reservoir and a partly collapsed aqueduct, but well-built. The aqueduct, now visible only in traces, once carried water from the reservoir to a fountain, now destroyed, located in the plain near the road.”

The site was revisited in 1873 by Clermont-Ganneau, who offered a similar description, suggesting that the location may have once served as a rest station or postal stop on the ancient Arab route between Syria and Egypt.

The khan site was registered as an antiquities site during the British Mandate, although the owners were permitted to construct a 10-square-meter reservoir within its boundaries.

In 1994, Andrew Petersen examined the site and found it largely unchanged from the Mandate era, except that the Mandate-era reservoir had been replaced by a modern water tower. He described the remains as including a wall about 10 meters long, running north–south, with an entrance near the northern end. South of the entrance is a barrel-vaulted room measuring 8.3 meters long and 1.8 meters wide.

In 2002, archaeological excavations at the moshav uncovered significant remains from the Mamluk period.

As of 2022, the population of Bnei Darom was estimated at 979 settlers.

Sources:
Due to the limited availability of Arabic sources, Hebrew-language references were used:

• The settlement’s official Hebrew website
• Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
• Palestine Remembered (entry for the village of Isdud and ‘Arab Suqrir)