Hatta

Hatta stood on level ground on the southern coastal plain, thirty-one kilometres northeast of Gaza and about two kilometres north of the British military base built between the village and al-Faluja. Its adobe houses followed a grid within an overall rectangular plan. The residents were Muslim and maintained a mosque. An elementary school opened in 1923 and had seventy-three pupils by the mid-1940s. Hatta came under al-Faluja’s administrative jurisdiction and relied on that town for health, commercial and administrative services.

The 1922 census counted 570 residents; the 1931 census counted 646 people in 140 houses. The last population figure on which the three retrieved pages agree is 970 in 1944/45. Their later estimates are not identical: Palestine Remembered gives 1,125 for 1948, while Zochrot gives 1,130. The 1944/45 land tables account for the village’s full 5,305 dunums: 5,193 were Arab-owned and 112 were public, while Palestine Remembered records no Jewish-owned land. Of the total area, 5,112 dunums were cultivable, comprising 5,108 under cereals and four classed as plantations or irrigable land; forty-five dunums were built-up and 148 were non-cultivable. These are land-use areas for 1944/45, not measures of agricultural output. Farming was primarily rain-fed, producing grain, fruit and vegetables, and some villagers also raised sheep.

All three sources place Hatta’s capture by the Giv’ati Brigade in the Ten Days between the two truces, but they do not give one uncontested date. PalQuest reports that Israeli historian Benny Morris dates the occupation to 14–15 July 1948, then describes a larger offensive on 17–18 July that took Hatta and other Egyptian-held positions. Palestine Remembered’s summary gives 17 July; Zochrot’s fact panel gives 18 July and its narrative gives 17–18 July. The operation labels differ too: Zochrot names Operation Death to the Invader, Palestine Remembered’s summary lists either An-Far or Barak, and PalQuest’s account identifies Giv’ati’s southern-front operations without applying either of those labels to the village.

PalQuest reproduces an account from the Israeli History of the War of Independence in which a platoon of Giv’ati’s Third Battalion took Hatta after a brief concentrated attack and the Egyptian defenders withdrew. It also records operational orders calling for civilians to be expelled and says the southern-front operations displaced more than 20,000 people from at least sixteen villages. Palestine Remembered classifies Hatta’s own exodus as the result of direct military assault and records the village as completely depopulated. The retrieved pages do not establish a more detailed village-specific sequence for when Hatta’s residents left or whether any remained to be expelled after the troops entered; this entry therefore does not infer one. PalQuest further reports that, after renewed fighting in the area, a United Nations commission found that Israeli forces had occupied Hatta before the second truce took effect.

PalQuest places Zavdi’el, founded in 1950, on Hatta’s land and reports that Alumma was founded in 1965; it expressly locates nearby Qomemiyyut and Rewacha outside Hatta’s land. Zochrot’s page is less internally consistent: its summary lists Alma twice and part of Ruha as post-1948 settlements on village land, while its narrative also names Zavdiel and Aluma. The cited pages do not reconcile those boundary labels.

The physical description reproduced by Palestine Remembered and Zochrot comes from Walid Khalidi’s 1992 survey. At that time a small part of the site was covered by a planted forest, house debris lay beneath the trees, sycamores and cactuses grew there, the surrounding land was cultivated, and the British-built military airfield remained in use. The retrieved sources provide no later dated field survey, so those details describe the site in 1992 and are not presented here as its condition today.

Sources

• Hatta — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• Hatta — Palestine Remembered
• Hatta — Zochrot