Ramle district · depopulated 1948 · 1 min read
Al-Haditha
الحَدِيثَة
Al-Haditha stood above the west bank of Wadi al-Natuf, a village of 760 with a mosque, a small market and a school founded in 1924. Israeli forces occupied it on 12 July 1948 during the first stage of Operation Dani; two months later its partial demolition went to a special ministerial committee for approval. Khalidi's 1992 site survey recorded rubble, the widened village road and one sealed house among olive and eucalyptus trees.
See Al-Haditha on the Atlas31.9633°N · 34.9518°EAl-Haditha stood on a hill at the eastern edge of the central coastal plain, above the west bank of Wadi al-Natuf. A secondary road reached the main route between Lydda and Bayt Nabala, and other local roads joined it to the neighbouring villages. Architectural fragments carried the depth of the site: it has been identified with the ancient Hadid or Adida, though the record presents those identifications as historical interpretation rather than certainty.
The village grew from a trapezoidal plan into a rectangle as it expanded near the end of the Mandate. Its centre held a mosque, a small market and an elementary school opened in 1924; forty-two children were enrolled in 1943. The population was Muslim. The 1931 census counted 520 people, and the 1944/45 survey counted 760. Grain and olives were the principal crops. Of the Arab-held land recorded in 1944/45, 4,419 dunums were planted in cereals and 246 were irrigated or used for orchards; about 200 of those dunums were olive groves.
Israeli forces occupied al-Haditha on 12 July 1948 during the first stage of Operation Dani, while Lydda and Ramla were being taken. PalQuest says that on 14 September Ben-Gurion consigned the village to partial destruction, citing a lack of manpower to occupy the area in depth, and asked the special ministerial committee overseeing village demolitions to approve it.
The settlement of Hadid was founded on village land in 1950, about two kilometres northwest of the ruins. Khalidi’s 1992 site survey recorded stone and concrete rubble, one sealed house with a tiled gable, the old village road widened, clusters of Christ’s-thorn, olive and eucalyptus, and cultivated surrounding land.
Sources
Cited works
2- palquest.org — al haditha(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/16815/al-haditha
- palestineremembered.com — index(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/al-Haditha/index.html
Connected in the archive
2 connected records2 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Bayt Nabalaبيت نبالا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: A secondary road reached the main route between Lydda and Bayt Nabala, and other local roads joined it to the neighbouring villages.
in the same district — 1 record
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Al-Tinaالتِينَة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Ramle district.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Al-Haditha.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-haditha.- MLA
“Al-Haditha.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-haditha. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-al-haditha, title = {Al-Haditha}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/al-haditha}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }