Al-Majdal, Askalan

Ashkelon ( ; , ; ) or Ashqelon, is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border with the Gaza Strip.

The modern city is named after the ancient seaport of Ascalon, which was destroyed in 1270 and whose remains are on the southwestern edge of the modern metropolis. The Israeli city, first known as Migdal (), was founded in 1949 approximately 4 km inland from ancient Ascalon at the Palestinian town of al-Majdal (). Its inhabitants had been exclusively Muslims and Christians, and the area had been allocated to the Palestine in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine; on the eve of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the inhabitants numbered 10,000 and in October 1948, the city accommodated thousands more Palestinian refugees from nearby villages. The town was conquered by Israeli forces on 5 November 1948, by which time much of the Arab population had fled,B. Morris, The transfer of Al Majdal's remaining Palestinians to Gaza, 1950, in '' 1948 and After; Israel and the Palestinians''. leaving some 2700 inhabitants, of whom Israeli soldiers deported 500 in December 1948 and most of the rest were deported by 1950. Today, the city's population is almost entirely Israeli Jews.

Migdal, as it was called in Hebrew, was initially repopulated by Jewish immigrants and demobilized soldiers. It was subsequently renamed multiple times, first as Migdal Gaza, Migdal Gad and Migdal Ashkelon, until in 1953, the coastal neighbourhood of Afridar was incorporated, and the name ''Ashkelon'' was adopted for the combined town. By 1961, Ashkelon was ranked 18th among Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000. In the population of Ashkelon was , making it the third-largest city in Israel's Southern District.

Etymology

The name Ashkelon is probably western Semitic, and might be connected to the triliteral root ('to weigh', from a Semitic root , akin to Hebrew () or Arabic (), 'weight', perhaps attesting to its importance as a center for mercantile activities. Its name appeared in Phoenician and Punic as () and (). Majdal (Arabic) and Migdal (Hebrew) mean 'tower'.

History

Canaanites to Mamluks

The archaeological site of Ascalon, today known as Tel Ashkelon, was the oldest and largest seaport in Canaan, part of Philistia, the pentapolis (a grouping of five cities) of the Philistines, north of Gaza City and south of Jaffa.

The site was an important city during Roman, Byzantine and pre-Crusades Muslim rule, and particularly during the period of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, due to its location near the coast and between the Crusader states and Egypt. The Battle of Ascalon was the last action of the First Crusade. In 1270, the Mamluk sultan Baybars ordered the fortifications and harbour at the site to be destroyed. As a result, the city was abandoned by its inhabitants and fell into disuse.

Ottoman period

The Palestinian village of Al-Jura (El-Jurah) stood northeast of and immediately adjacent to Tel Ashkelon and is documented in Ottoman tax registers. El-Jurah was depopulated during the 1948 war.

The Arab village of Majdal was mentioned by historians and tourists at the end of the 15th century. In 1596, Ottoman records showed Majdal to be a large village of 559 Muslim households, making it the 7th-most-populous locality in Palestine after Safad, Jerusalem, Gaza, Nablus, Hebron and Kafr Kanna.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 144Petersen, Andrew (2005). ''The Towns of Palestine under Muslim Rule AD 600–1600''. BAR International Series 1381. p. 133.

An official Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that ''Medschdel'' had a total of 420 houses and a population of 1175, though the population count included men only.

British Mandate

In the 1922 census of Palestine, ''Majdal'' had a population of 5,064; 33 Christians and 5,031 Muslims,Barron, 1923, Table V, Sub-district of Gaza, p
8
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 6,226 (6,166 Muslims and 41 Christians) with 172 in the suburbs (167 Muslims, 4 Christians, and one Jew).Palestine Office of Statistics, Vital Statistical Tables 1922–1945, Table A8.

In the 1945 statistics Majdal had a population of 9,910; ninety Christians and 9,820 Muslims,Department of Statistics, 1945, p
32
/ref> with a total (urban and rural) of 43,680 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. 2,050 dunams were public land; all the rest was owned by Arabs.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
46
/ref> of the dunams, 2,337 were used for citrus and bananas, 2,886 were plantations and irrigable land, 35,442 for cereals, while 1,346 were built-up land.

Majdal was known for its weaving industry. The town had around 500 looms in 1909. In 1920 a British Government report estimated that there were 550 cotton looms in the town with an annual output worth 30–40 million francs. But the industry suffered from imports from Europe and by 1927 only 119 weaving establishments remained. The three major fabrics produced were "malak" (silk), 'ikhdari' (bands of red and green) and 'jiljileh' (dark red bands). These were used for festival dresses throughout Southern Palestine. Many other fabrics were produced, some with poetic names such as ''ji'nneh u nar'' ("heaven and hell"), ''nasheq rohoh'' ("breath of the soul") and ''abu mitayn'' ("father of two hundred").

In addition to agriculture, residents practiced animal husbandry which formed was an important source of income for the town. In 1943, they owned 354 heads of cattle, 168 sheep over a year old, 170 goats over a year old, 65 camels, 17 horses, 39 mules, 447 donkeys, 2966 fowls, and 808 pigeons.

El Majdal-Survey-of-Palestine-3-4-5-6-combined.jpg, 1931-2 map of central El Majdal. Nearly all Palestinians who lived here and survived the 1947-8 Nakba were at first confined to a ghetto, then later expelled
Majdal11.png, Weavers in Majdal, 1934–39

State of Israel

Majdal was occupied by the Egyptian army in the early stages of the 1948 war, along with the rest of the Gaza region that had been allocated to the Arab State in the United Nations plan. Over the next few months, the town was subjected to Israeli air-raids and shelling. All but about 1,000 of the town's residents were forced to leave by the time it was captured by Israeli forces as a sequel to Operation Yoav on 4 November 1948. General Yigal Allon ordered the expulsion of the remaining Palestinians but the local commanders did not do so and the Arab population soon recovered to more than 2,500 due mostly to refugees slipping back and also due to the transfer of Palestinians from nearby villages. Most of them were elderly, women, or children. During the next year or so, the Palestinians were held in a confined area surrounded by barbed wire, which became commonly known as the "ghetto".Morris, 2004, pp
528
−529. Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion were in favor of expulsion, while Mapam and the Israeli labor union Histadrut objected. The government offered the Palestinians positive inducements to leave, including a favorable currency exchange, but also caused panic through night-time raids. The first group was deported to the Gaza Strip by truck on 17 August 1950 after an expulsion order had been served. The deportation was approved by Ben-Gurion and Dayan over the objections of Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, who envisioned the town as a productive example of equal opportunity. By October 1950, twenty Palestinian families remained, most of whom later moved to Lydda or Gaza. According to Israeli records, in total 2,333 Palestinians were transferred to the Gaza Strip, 60 to Jordan, 302 to other towns in Israel, and a small number remained in Ashkelon. Lavon argued that this operation dissipated "the last shred of trust the Arabs had in Israel, the sincerity of the State's declarations on democracy and civil equality, and the last remnant of confidence the Arab workers had in the Histadrut." Acting on an Egyptian complaint, the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission ruled that the Palestinians transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, but this was not done.

Majdal was granted to Israel in the 1949 Armistice Agreements

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