Ma'alul

Ma'alul (Arabic: معلول) was a Palestinian village, with a mixed population of primarily Muslims with a substantial minority of Palestinian Christians, that was depopulated and destroyed by Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Located six kilometers west of the city of Nazareth, many of its inhabitants became internally displaced refugees, after taking refuge in Nazareth and the neighbouring town of Yafa an-Naseriyye. Despite having never left the territory that came to form part of Israel, the majority of the villagers of Ma'alul, and other Palestinian villages like Indur and al-Mujaydil, were declared "absentees", allowing the confiscation of their land under the Absentees Property Law. Today, much of the former village's lands are owned by the Jewish National Fund. All that remains of its former structures are two churches, a mosque and a Roman-era mausoleum, known locally as Qasr al-Dayr ("castle of the monastery").