Al-Haditha, Ramle

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 on July 12, 1948, under the first stage of Operation Dani.

This article is about the former Palestinian village in Ramle Sub-district. For other uses, see Haditha (disambiguation).
Al-Haditha

الحديثة
Etymology: "new"[1]
1870s map
1940s map
modern map
1940s with modern overlay map
A series of historical maps of the area around Al-Haditha, Ramle (click the buttons)
Al-Haditha
Location within Mandatory Palestine
Coordinates: 31°57′48″N 34°57′07″E
Palestine grid145/152
Geopolitical entityMandatory Palestine
SubdistrictRamle
Date of depopulationJuly 12, 1948[2]
Population
 (1945)
 • Total760[3][4]
Cause(s) of depopulationMilitary assault by Yishuv forces
Current LocalitiesHadid[5][6]

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.[7] Hadid was called 'Adida in the Book of Maccabees, while Eusebius referred to it as Adatha or Aditha.[7]

Ottoman era

In 1870, Victor Guérin visited and "at a quarter of an hour's distance south-east of Haditheh, [he] found several ancient tombs cut in the rock. The village of Haditheh he found to be on the site of an ancient town. Cisterns, a birket, tombs, and rock-cut caves, with cut stones scattered about, are all that remain."[8]

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.[9][10]

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."[11]

British Mandate era
The Sheikh house 1931

In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Hadata had a population of 415 Muslims,[12] increasing in the 1931 census to 520, still all Muslims, in a total of 119 houses.[13] In the 1945 statistics, the village had a population of 760 Muslims,[3] with a total of 7,110 dunums of land.[4] A total of 10 dunams of village land were used for citrus and bananas, 4,419 dunums were used for cereals, 246 dunums were irrigated or used for plantations,[14] while 16 dunams were built–up, or urban, land.[15]

  • Al-Haditha 1942 1:20,000
  • Al-Haditha 1945 1:250,000
  • 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.[16] However, Al-Haditha was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on July 12, 1948, under the first stage of Operation Dani.[2]

In September, 1948, Ben-Gurion asked the ministerial committee for permission to destroy 14 villages, one of which was Al-Haditha.[17]

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."[6]

References
  1. Palmer, 1881, p. 229
  2. Morris, 2004, p. xix, village #224. Also gives cause of depopulation.
  3. Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 29
  4. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 66 Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Morris, 2004, p. xxi, settlement #88. Also gives cause of depopulation.
  6. Khalidi, 1991, p. 381
  7. Neubauer, 1868, pp. 85-86
  8. Guérin, 1875, pp. 64 -67, as given in Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 322
  9. Socin, 1879, p. 154
  10. Hartmann, 1883, p. 140, noted 26 houses
  11. Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 297
  12. Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p. 22
  13. Mills, 1932, p. 20.
  14. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 115
  15. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 165
  16. Morris, 2004, p. 92
  17. Morris, 2004, p. 354

Bibliography
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