Al-Haditha was a
Palestinian village in the
Ramle Subdistrict. It was located 8 km northeast of
Ramla, on the bank of Wadi al-Natuf. The site, now known as Tel Hadid, has yielded significant archaeological remains from many periods. Al-Haditha was depopulated during the
1948 Arab-Israeli War
Events January
* January 1
** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated.
** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect.
** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...
on July 12, 1948, under the first stage of
Operation Dani.
History
It has been suggested that Al-Haditha was the site of the biblical village of ''Hadid'', mentioned in the
Book of Ezra (II, 33) and later in the
Mishna as a city of
Judea fortified by
Joshua.
[Neubauer, 1868, pp]
85
86 ''Hadid'' was called Adida'' in the
Book of Maccabees
The Books of the Maccabees or the Sefer HaMakabim (the ''Book of the Maccabees'') recount the history of the Maccabees, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion against the Seleucid dynasty.
List of books
The Books of the Maccabees refers to a series o ...
, while
Eusebius referred to it as ''Adatha'' or ''Aditha.''
[
]
Ottoman era
In 1870, Victor Guérin visited and "at a quarter of an hour's distance south-east of Haditheh, efound several ancient
tombs cut in the rock. The village of Haditheh he found to be on the site of an ancient town. Cistern
A cistern (Middle English ', from Latin ', from ', "box", from Greek ', "basket") is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by t ...
s, a birket, tombs, and rock-cut caves, with cut stones scattered about, are all that remain."
An official Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that "El Hadite" had 28 houses and a population of 145, though the population count included only men.
In 1882 the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described the village as "a moderate-sized village on a terraced Tell at the mouth of a valley at the foot of the hills, with a well on the east. There are remains of a considerable town round it, tombs and quarries exist ; and the mound on which the village stands is covered with pottery."
British Mandate era
In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Hadata had a population of 415 Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s,[Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p]
22
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 520, still all Muslims, in a total of 119 houses.[Mills, 1932, p]
20
In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 760 Muslims,[ with a total of 7,110 ]dunums
A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...
of land.[ A total of 10 dunams of village land were used for citrus and ]banana
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...
s, 4,419 dunums were used for cereals, 246 dunums were irrigated or used for plantations, while 16 dunams were built–up, or urban, land.
File:Al-Haditha 1942.jpg, Al-Haditha 1942 1:20,000
File:Beit Nabala 1945.jpg, Al-Haditha 1945 1:250,000
File:Lydda and Ramla area - 9 July 1948.PNG, Depopulated villages in the Ramle Subdistrict
1948, aftermath
Early in 1948, the Mukhtar of Al-Haditha met to negotiate a non–belligerent agreement with the neighbouring Ben Shemen. However, Al-Haditha was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
Events January
* January 1
** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated.
** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect.
** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...
on July 12, 1948, under the first stage of Operation Dani.[
In September, 1948, ]Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion ( ; he, דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Adopting the name ...
asked the ministerial committee for permission to destroy 14 villages, one of which was Al-Haditha.[Morris, 2004, p]
354
/ref>
In 1992 the village site was described: "The stone and concrete rubble of destroyed houses is visible on the site. Only one house remains; it is sealed and deserted. It has a gabled, tiled roof, and a sign ('BROADWAY 80') is glued to one of its walls. There are also clusters of trees on the site, including Christ's–thorn, olive and eucalyptus trees. The old village road remains and has been enlarged. The surrounding land is cultivated."
References
Bibliography
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External links
al-Haditha
Zochrot
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 14:
IAA Wikimedia commons
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War
Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
District of Ramla
Hebrew Bible places
Canaanite cities
Ancient Jewish settlements of Judaea