'Iraq al-Manshiyya

‘Iraq al-Manshiyya stood thirty-two kilometers from Gaza in a country of rolling hills where the coastal plain merges into the foothills of the Hebron mountains, bounded on the west by Wadi Fattala and lying on the south side of the highway between al-Faluja to the northwest and Bayt Jibrin to the east. Its name held both its geography and its history: ‘iraq, a small hill, for the ground it sat on, and al-Manshiyya, the built one, added by its people to distinguish it from a nearby village also called ‘Iraq, from which they had moved. In 1596 it was a village in the nahiya of Gaza, in the liwa’ of Gaza, with sixty-one people, taxed on wheat and barley and on goats and beehives.

In the late nineteenth century the village was built of adobe brick and surrounded by arable land. Its plan was radial, the smaller streets branching from the crossing of two perpendicular main streets, which formed its center. Three wells supplied it with water. As it grew it spread toward the highway and northeast toward Tall al-Shaykh Ahmad al-Urayni, a mound some thirty-two meters high that rose north of the village and carried on its summit the shrine of Shaykh Ahmad al-Urayni. The Arab population was Muslim. There was an old mosque and a newer one considered among the handsomest village mosques in the country, with several rooms, a portico and a courtyard, and an elementary school founded in 1934 which enrolled 201 pupils in the mid-1940s.

The people lived chiefly by agriculture, growing grain, grapes and many kinds of trees, olive and almond among them. Cultivation was mostly rainfed, despite groundwater being available, especially along the line where the plain meets the foothills. In 1944/45, 13,449 dunums were allotted to cereals and fifty-three dunums irrigated or in orchards. Goats and sheep gave the hair and yarn for rug weaving; the villagers dyed their rugs in al-Faluja, where they also went for medical treatment and other services. The mound beside the village was for some years identified with the Philistine city of Gath, but excavation between 1956 and 1961 found no trace of a Philistine presence; those digs, and later work in 1984, established that a settlement stood there from the fourth millennium BC until the second century BC, and that its later history continued below the tell, on the site of ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya itself. The census of 1931 counted 1,347 people in 299 houses; the 1944/45 survey counted 2,010 Arabs, alongside 210 Jews.

The village was attacked repeatedly and held out. Benny Morris records that the Giv’ati Brigade tried and failed to occupy it at the end of July 1948, during the second truce; the New York Times reported on 28 July that Israeli forces were attacking Egyptian communications and vehicle concentrations there, and two days later described serious engagements between Hatta and ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya. The Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref writes that the village was the target of continuous attacks during the second truce, and notably on 22 August. A large-scale attempt was made when the truce ended, on 16 October, at the opening of Operation Yoav; the Israeli army was beaten back decisively by Egyptian forces, though not before an armored column stormed the village. An Israeli spokesman quoted in the New York Times said that in forcing its way in the Israeli army shot up the village, killed a number of Egyptians and destroyed dumps and guns, called the attack a punitive raid, and admitted the loss of three tanks. A final assault on 27–28 December by units of the Alexandroni Brigade entered the village and was driven out again by Egyptian reinforcements.

At the end of the war ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya lay inside the Faluja pocket, an enclave holding 3,000 Palestinian civilians and an Egyptian brigade — one of whose officers was Gamal Abdel Nasser. Morris writes that within days of the signing of the Israel–Egypt armistice agreement on 24 February 1949 Israel violated its terms by intimidating into flight the two to three thousand villagers of ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya and neighboring al-Faluja. The United Nations mediator recorded that civilians in the enclave had been beaten and robbed by Israeli soldiers, and that cases of attempted rape were reported. Morris judges that the decision to drive the population out was probably taken by the Israeli commander of the southern front, Yigal Allon, probably with Ben-Gurion’s approval. Zochrot dates the depopulation to 1 February 1949.

The kibbutz of Gat had been established on land traditionally belonging to the village in 1941, and took over further land in 1949 after the expulsion. Qiryat Gat was established on village lands in 1954, and Sde Moshe in 1956 on village land east of the site. A eucalyptus forest has been planted over the village, and two signs, in Hebrew and English, name it the Margolin Peace Forest. Only traces of the village streets remain, and scattered cactuses. Part of the surrounding land is farmed by Israelis.

Sources

• ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
• ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya — Zochrot