Al-Faluja

Al-Faluja sat on hilly ground thirty kilometers east of Gaza, ringed by the bends of Wadi al-Faluja and commanding a junction of roads to Hebron, Jerusalem, and Bir al-Sab’. It was a market village of mud-brick and stone houses, its people farming grain, olives, and orchards; the 1945 British survey counted about 4,700 residents.

The town’s name became famous in the war’s final months. When the Egyptian army advanced into Palestine in May 1948, its brigades dug in around al-Faluja and neighboring Iraq al-Manshiyya; cut off by the Israeli offensives of October, the garrison — including a staff officer named Gamal Abdel Nasser — held out through the winter in what became known as the Faluja pocket. Under the February 1949 armistice with Egypt the soldiers marched out with their weapons, but the civilians who had stayed were promised they could remain. Within weeks, according to accounts documented by historians on both sides, they were subjected to shootings, beatings, and looting intended to drive them out; by mid-March 1949 the town was empty, its people expelled toward Gaza and Hebron over the protests of UN observers and the American embassy.

Al-Faluja was then demolished. Qiryat Gat and several smaller settlements later rose on and around its lands, and its refugees scattered mainly to the camps of the Gaza Strip — carrying with them the memory of a town that survived a famous siege only to be emptied after the fighting had formally ended.

Sources

• Al-Faluja — Palestine Remembered
• Al-Faluja — Zochrot
• Al-Faluja — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• Al-Faluja — Wikipedia