Jerusalem district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
'Islin
عِسْلِين
'Islin was a village of 260 people that had been abandoned in the 1870s and resettled around the turn of the century. Israeli troops mortared and took it on 17–18 July 1948, during Operation Dani. A Jewish National Fund plant nursery and an Egged bus repair yard now stand on the site.
See 'Islin on the Atlas31.7847°N · 35.0063°E‘Islin stood on a hill on the southern slope of a mountain about twenty-one kilometres west of Jerusalem, facing southeast, with a wadi running along its western and southern edges. It lay about a kilometre west of the highway between Bayt Jibrin and the Jaffa–Jerusalem road, with dirt paths to its neighbours. The village was divided into an eastern and a western section, with new building extending north.
It is identified with the sixteenth-century village of ‘Islit recorded in the Ottoman tax registers, then a place of seventy-seven people in the nahiya of Ramla, paying tax on wheat, barley, fruit trees, goats and beehives. By the 1870s it was uninhabited and the ruins of the older village were still visible; it was probably resettled around the beginning of the twentieth century. The 1931 census counted 186 people in 49 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 260, on 2,159 dunums of which 830 were under cereals and 104 irrigated or orchard. The residents were Muslims and built in stone and mud. Springs and wells gave drinking water; the crops — grain, fruit trees, olives and vines — were rainfed, and the farmland lay north and southeast of the village.
What is recorded of ‘Islin’s fall is that it came in a limited offensive carried out as part of Operation Dani: along with a chain of other villages it was mortared and captured by Israeli troops on 17–18 July 1948, according to Benny Morris. Zochrot gives 18 July. The account of neighbouring ‘Artuf names the unit — the Second Platoon of B Company of the Har’el Brigade’s Fourth Battalion, which drove out the people of Ishwa’ and ‘Islin before turning on ‘Artuf. Beyond that the record for ‘Islin itself is thin.
Eshta’ol, founded in 1949, stands on land belonging to ‘Islin and to neighbouring Ishwa’. Partly destroyed walls and stone terraces can be seen across the site, with thick forest, bushes and grass growing over the rubble. Carob and some olive trees grow along the northern edge, eucalyptus and fir in the south. The Jewish National Fund has established a plant nursery on the southern edge of the village, and the site also holds a bus repair yard belonging to the Israeli transport cooperative Egged.
Sources
- ‘Islin — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
- ‘Islin — Zochrot, drawn from Walid Khalidi, All That Remains (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)
Cited works
2- palquest.org — islin(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17016/islin
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49377/en
Connected in the archive
29 connected records29 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 4 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Bayt Jibrinبيت جبرين
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: It lay about a kilometre west of the highway between Bayt Jibrin and the Jaffa–Jerusalem road, with dirt paths to its neighbours.
- Ishwa'إشْوَع
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The account of neighbouring 'Artuf names the unit — the Second Platoon of B Company of the Har'el Brigade's Fourth Battalion, which drove out the people of Ishwa' and 'Islin before turning on 'Artuf.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: 'Islin stood on a hill on the southern slope of a mountain about twenty-one kilometres west of Jerusalem, facing southeast, with a wadi running along its western and southern edges.
- Ramleالرملة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: It is identified with the sixteenth-century village of 'Islit recorded in the Ottoman tax registers, then a place of seventy-seven people in the nahiya of Ramla, paying tax on wheat, barley, fruit trees, goats and beehives.
in the same district — 25 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- 'Allarعَلاّر
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- 'Artufعَرْتُوف
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Malihaالمالِحَة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Qabuالقبو
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Qastalالقسطل
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- Al-Walajaالولجة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Jerusalem district.
- and 19 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“'Islin.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/islin.- MLA
“'Islin.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/islin. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-islin, title = {'Islin}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/islin}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }