Interior Ministry requested the eviction of "145 or so" remaining villagers: the official in charge of the Jerusalem District said there were many good houses in the village which could be used to accommodate several hundred new Jewish immigrants. In January 1950 David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett and Yosef Weitz decided to evict the villagers, "but without coercion." On March 19, 1950, the transfer of the Arabs of Zakariya was approved and the order was carried out on June 9, 1950. The manner of expulsion of the villagers is not mentioned. The people of Zakariyya were evicted on 17 May 1950 by the military. Fifteen families comprising 65 people, were transferred to the town of Ramla, while the rest of the community, some 130 people, were taken to a location near the Jordanian border where they were ordered to walk over. To hasten the process, "soldiers shot in the air several times". They eventually settled in the West Bank refugee camps of al-Arroub and Dheisheh Refugee Camp, where the village's war refugees had settled. Two weeks after the village was emptied, the Jewish Agency resettled families of Jewish-Kurdish settlers near the village, later moving them inside the former Palestinian village to become residents of a new moshav, now Hebraized as Zekharia. During the 1960s, most of the buildings in the village were destroyed as part of a national program to "level" depopulated villages. In 1992, Walid Khalidi described the remaining structures: "The mosque and a number of houses, some occupied by Jewish residents and others deserted, remain on the site. Large sections of the site itself are covered with wild vegetation. The mosque is in a state of neglect and an Israeli flag is planted on top of the minaret. [..] One of the occupied houses is a two-storey stone structure with a flat roof. Its second story windows have round arches and grillwork. Parts of the surrounding lands are cultivated by Israeli farmers." Culture The village was known for its Palestinian costumes. A wedding dress from Zakariyya (ca. 1930) is part of the collection in Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) at Museum of New Mexico at Santa Fe. Notable residents Nasr Abdel Aziz Eleyan Gallery References Bibliography Zakariyya: pp. 1–17 (A catalog of the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) at Santa Fe's collection of Palestinian clothing and jewellery.) External links Welcome to Zakariyya Zakariyya, Zochrot Survey of Western