Yalo ( ar, يالو, also transliterated Yalu) was a

Palestinian Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

village located 13 kilometres southeast of

Ramla Ramla or Ramle ( he, רַמְלָה, ''Ramlā''; ar, الرملة, ''ar-Ramleh'') is a city in the Central District of Israel. Today, Ramle is one of Israel's mixed cities, with both a significant Jewish and Arab populations. The city was f ...

. Identified by Edward Robinson as the ancient

Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

ite and

Israelite The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

city of

Aijalon The Ayalon Valley ( he, or , ''ʾAyyālōn'') is a valley in the lowland of the Shephelah in the States of Palestine and Israel, identified in the 19th century as Yalo at the foot of the Bethoron pass, a Palestinian Arab village located sout ...

.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, pp
80
81 During the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, it was the site of a Crusader castle, Castrum Arnaldi. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War,

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

annexed the West Bank, including the village of Yalo. Yalo's population increased dramatically owing to an influx of

Palestinian refugees Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country over the course of the 1947–49 Palestine war (1948 Palestinian exodus) and the Six-Day War (1967 Palestinian exodu ...

from neighbouring towns and villages depopulated during the war. During the

1967 Six Day War The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Ju ...

, Yalo's inhabitants were expelled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the village was destroyed. Yalo and the area surrounding

Latrun Latrun ( he, לטרון, ''Latrun''; ar, اللطرون, ''al-Latrun'') is a strategic hilltop in the Latrun salient in the Ayalon Valley, and a depopulated Palestinian village. It overlooks the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 25 kilometers ...

were annexed from Jordan by Israel. Subsequently, with donations from Canadian benefactors, the Jewish National Fund built a recreational space,

Canada Park Canada Park ( he, פארק קנדה, , also Ayalon Park,) is a declared Israeli national park stretching over 7,000 dunams (7 km2), and extending from No man's land into the West Bank. The park is North of Highway 1 (Tel Aviv-Jerusalem), bet ...

, which contains the former sites of Yalo and two other neighbouring villages,

Dayr Ayyub Dayr Ayyub ( ar, دير أيوب ) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on March 6, 1948 by the Givati and Sheva' brigades of Operation Nachshon. It wa ...

and

Imwas Imwas or Emmaus ( ar, عِمواس), known in classical times as Nicopolis ( gr, Νικόπολις, lit=City of Victory), was a Palestinian Arab village located southeast of the city of Ramla and from Jerusalem in the Latrun salient of the W ...

History

Ancient period

Yalo is identified with the ancient

ite and

city of Ajalon.

Crusader period

The area was under contention in the Middle Ages by Christian and Muslim forces. In the Crusader period, a castle called ''Castellum Arnaldi'' or ''Chastel Arnoul'' was built at the site.Pringle, 1997
pp. 106
107 It was destroyed by Muslims in 1106, rebuilt in 1132–3, controlled by the

Templars , colors = White mantle with a red cross , colors_label = Attire , march = , mascot = Two knights riding a single horse , equipment ...

by 1179 and taken by

Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi () ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known by the epithet Saladin,, ; ku, سه‌لاحه‌دین, ; was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from an ethnic Kurdish family, he was the first of both Egypt and ...

in 1187. Some of its ruins are still visible.

Ottoman period

The village was incorporated into the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers in the ''

Nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'' of

Ramlah Ramla or Ramle ( he, רַמְלָה, ''Ramlā''; ar, الرملة, ''ar-Ramleh'') is a city in the Central District of Israel. Today, Ramle is one of Israel's mixed cities, with both a significant Jewish and Arab populations. The city was f ...

of the '' Liwa'' of Gazza. It had a population of 38 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive-trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 4,500 Akçe.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 154. During his travels in Palestine in 1838, American Biblical scholar Edward Robinson studied Yalo, associating it with Aijalon, an ancient village mentioned in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Old Testament. Robinson relied upon the works of

Jerome Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is co ...

and

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Chris ...

, who describe Aijalon as two Roman miles from

Nicopolis Nicopolis ( grc-gre, Νικόπολις, Nikópolis, City of Victory) or Actia Nicopolis was the capital city of the Roman province of Epirus Vetus. It was located in the western part of the modern state of Greece. The city was founded in 29 ...

; the biblical descriptions of the village; and the philological similarities between the present-day Arabic name and its Canaanite root. In ''Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and Adjacent Regions'' (1856), Edward Robinson and Eli Smith situate Yalo between two ravines, overlooking "the beautiful meadow-like tract of Merj Ibn 'Omeir." They note that a fountain from the western ravine served as a water source for the village, that the place has "an old appearance", and that on the cliff beyond the eastern ravine lay a series of large caverns. In these first-hand descriptions garnered from their regional travels, they wrote,

"The village belongs to the family of the Sheikhs Abu Ghaush, who reside at Kuriet al-'Enab. One of the younger of them was now here, and paid us a visit in our tent. The people of Yâlo were well disposed, and treated us respectfully."Robinson and Smith, 1856, p
144
/ref>

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (15 September 1821 – 21 Septembe 1890) was a French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included Greece, Asia Min ...

visited in 1863, while an Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that ''Jalo'' had a population of 250, in 67 houses, though the population count included men, only.Socin, 1879, p
155
/ref> In 1883, the PEF's ''

Survey of Western Palestine The PEF Survey of Palestine was a series of surveys carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) between 1872 and 1877 for the Survey of Western Palestine and in 1880 for the Survey of Eastern Palestine. The survey was carried out after the ...

'' described Yalo as "a small village on the slope of a low spur, with an open valley or small plain to the north. There is a spring to the east, where a branch valley runs down north, and on the east side of this valley are caves. The village stands 250 feet above the northern basin."

British Mandate

According to the British Mandate's 1922 census of Palestine, ''Yalu'' had 811 inhabitants, all Muslims.Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Jerusalem, p
15
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 963, still all Muslims, living in a total of 245 houses.Mills, 1932, p
44
/ref> In the 1945 statistics the population of Yalo was 1,220 Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
30
/ref> having a total of 14,992 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
68
/ref> Of this, 447 dunams of land was for plantations and irrigable land; 6,047 for cereals, while 74 dunams were built-up land.

1948 war

In the lead-up to the outbreak of 1948 Arab-Israeli war, on the night of 27 December 1947, the Etzioni Brigade of the

Hagana Haganah ( he, הַהֲגָנָה, lit. ''The Defence'') was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the Is ...

blew up three houses in Yalo. This action formed part of a series what Israeli historian Benny Morris has described as "Haganah retaliatory strikes", the operational orders of which "almost invariably contained an order to blow up one or several houses (as well as to kill 'adult males' or 'armed irregulars')."Morris, 2004, p
343
/ref> File:Yalu 1943.jpg, Yalo 1943 1:20,000 (top left quadrant) File:Yalu 1945.jpg, Yalo 1945 1:250,000 File:CanadaParkCropped.jpg, Yalo and the 1949 Armistice lines

Jordanian period

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Yalo was under Jordanian rule from 1948 until 1967. On 2 November 1950 Palestinian children were targeted by the

IDF IDF or idf may refer to: Defence forces * Irish Defence Forces * Israel Defense Forces *Iceland Defense Force, of the US Armed Forces, 1951-2006 * Indian Defence Force, a part-time force, 1917 Organizations * Israeli Diving Federation * Interac ...

when three of them children were shot, two fatally, by IDF troops near

in the

salient. Ali Muhammad Ali Alyyan (12), his sister Fakhriyeh Muhammad Ali Alyyan (10), and their cousin Khadijeh Abd al Fattah Muhammad Ali (8) were all from Yalo village. Morris wrote, "The two children li and Fakhriyehstood in a

wadi Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water ...

bed and a soldier opened fire at them. According to both

dult Dult is a village in Batala in Gurdaspur district of Punjab State, India. It is located from sub district headquarter, from district headquarter and from Sri Hargobindpur. The village is administrated by Sarpanch an elected representative o ...

witnesses only one man fired at them with a sten-gun but none of the detachment attempted to interfere". In 1961, the population was 1,644 persons.

1967 war

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i officials state that Yalo, Imwas and Beit Nuba were destroyed in the course of fighting that took place during the 1967 war. In June 1968, the Israeli embassy in Britain said that "these villages suffered heavy damage during the June war and its immediate aftermath, when our troops engaged two Egyptian Army commando units which had established themselves there and continued fighting after the war."

Tom Segev Tom Segev ( he, תום שגב; born March 1, 1945) is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives. Biography Segev was born in Jeru ...

and Jessica Cohen write that, in 1967, Yalo was one of three populated villages in the

area where Israeli armed forces told residents to leave their homes and gather in an open area outside the villages, after which they were ordered over loudspeakers to march to Ramallah. Segev and Cohen estimate that about 8,000 people left as a result of that order. They also write that, "In the general order distributed to Central Command soldiers,

and Yalu were associated with the failure to take the area in 1948 and were described as 'terms of disappointment, terms of a long and painful account, which has now been settled to the last cent.'"Segev, 2007, p
407
/ref>

Amos Kenan Amos Kenan ( he, עמוס קינן), also Amos Keinan, (May 2, 1927 – August 4, 2009) was an Israeli columnist, painter, sculptor, playwright and novelist. Biography Amos Levine (later Kenan) was born in south Tel Aviv. His parents were ...

, an Israeli soldier present during the operation, later gave a firsthand account of what happened to Yalo and its neighbouring villages. He said that, "The unit commander told us that it had been decided to blow up three villages in our sector; they were Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu ... In the houses we found one wounded Egyptian commando officer, and some very old people. At noon the first bulldozers arrived ..." The IDF used bulldozers and explosives to destroy 539 houses in Yalo.Karmi, 1999, p. 87 In ''The Case for Palestine'', John B. Quigley writes that, "The IDF blew up entire villages of

Emmaus Emmaus (; Greek: Ἐμμαούς, ''Emmaous''; la, Emmaus; , ''Emmaom''; ar, عمواس, ''ʻImwas'') is a town mentioned in the Gospel of Luke of the New Testament. Luke reports that Jesus appeared, after his death and resurrection, before tw ...

, Yalu, and Beit Nuba—near Jerusalem—and drove the villagers toward Jordan."Quigley, 2005, p. 168

Meron Benvenisti Meron Benvenisti ( he, מירון בנבנשתי, 21 April 193420 September 2020) was an Israeli political scientist who was deputy mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek from 1971 to 1978, during which he administered East Jerusalem and served as ...

explains that a week after their expulsion on June 7, 1967, thousands of refugees from the three villages tried to return home but "encountered army roadblocks that had been put up near the villages. From there they watched as bulldozers demolished their homes and the stones from the ruins were loaded on trucks belonging to Israeli contractors, who had bought them to use in building houses for Jews. The village sites, with their verdant orchards, were turned into a large picnic area and given the name

."Benvenisti, 2000, p
327
/ref> On June 21, 1967,

Knesset The Knesset ( he, הַכְּנֶסֶת ; "gathering" or "assembly") is the unicameral legislature of Israel. As the supreme state body, the Knesset is sovereign and thus has complete control of the entirety of the Israeli government (with ...

member

Tawfik Toubi Tawfik Toubi ( ar, توفيق طوبي, he, תופיק טובי, 11 May 1922 – 12 March 2011) was an Israeli Arab communist politician. He was the last surviving member of the first Knesset. Tawfik Toubi was married to Olga Touma and on ...

requested that

Defense Minister A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in s ...

Moshe Dayan allow Yalo inhabitants to return to their village, but his request was denied.

Michael Oren Michael Bornstein Oren (Hebrew: מיכאל אורן; born Michael Scott Bornstein; May 20, 1955) is an American-born Israeli historian, author, politician, former ambassador to the United States (2009–2013), former member of the Knesset for ...

writes that the Arab villagers were offered compensation by Israel, but were not allowed to return. Since then, the village's evicted residents have campaigned for their return to and reconstruction of Yalo.

Post-2003 development

Since 2003, the Israeli

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

Zochrot Zochrot ( he, זוכרות; "Remembering"; ar, ذاكرات; "Memories") is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2002. Based in Tel Aviv, its aim is to promote awareness of the Palestinian ''Nakba'' ("Catastrophe"), including the 1948 Pa ...

('Remember' in Hebrew) has lobbied the Jewish National Fund for permission to post signs designating the sites of the former Palestinian villages in Canada Park.Out of sight maybe, but not out of mind
by Zafrir Rinat, 13 June 2007 Haaretz After petitioning the Israeli High Court,, Zochrot permission was granted. However, subsequently the signs have been stolen or vandalized.

Artistic representations

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour made Yalo the subject of one of his paintings. The work, named for the village, was one of a series of four on destroyed Palestinian villages that he produced in 1988; the others being

Bayt Dajan Bayt Dajan ( ar, بيت دجن, Bayt Dajan; he, בית דג'אן), also known as Dajūn, was a Palestinian Arab village situated approximately southeast of Jaffa. It is thought to have been the site of the biblical town of Beth Dagon, mentione ...

and

Yibna Yibna ( ar, يبنى; ''Jabneh'' or ''Jabneel'' in Biblical times; ''Jamnia'' in Roman times; '' Ibelin'' to the Crusaders), or Tel Yavne is an archaeological site and depopulated Palestinian town. The ruins are located immediately southeast of ...

.Ankori, 2006, p
82
/ref>

Demographics

In 1922, at the beginning of British Mandate rule in Palestine, Yalo's population was 811. In 1931 the village's population increased to 963 people, according to a census by British Mandatory authorities. In Sami Hadawi's 1945 land and population survey, its population was 1,220 Arabs.

References

Bibliography

* * * * (pp
91
93) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Quigley, J.B. (2005). ''The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective''.

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 D ...

. , . * * * * * {{refend

External links

Welcome To Yalu
Palestine Remembered *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17
IAA

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Arab villages depopulated after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Hebrew Bible cities Castles and fortifications of the Kingdom of Jerusalem Castles in Israel