Jerusalem district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
Khirbat al-Lawz
خربة اللَوْز
Khirbat al-Lawz was a village of 450 people on a ridge eleven kilometres west of Jerusalem, its vineyards, olives and almonds terraced down the slope below. The Har'el Brigade took it on 13–14 July 1948 and went on turning refugees back for months afterwards. The forest planted over it is dedicated to Moshe Dayan.
See Khirbat al-Lawz on the Atlas31.7678°N · 35.1114°EKhirbat al-Lawz stood on the southern side of a mountain crest 750 metres up, about eleven kilometres west of Jerusalem, looking out south, east and west. Wadi al-Sarar ran past the village’s southern fields on its way down to the sea. A secondary road linked it eastward to ‘Ayn Karim, and so to Jerusalem. In the late nineteenth century the village stood on the upper slope of a ridge, 245 metres above the valley to the south, with the slope below it terraced for cultivation.
Its plan was an arc running east to west, its houses mostly limestone, with new houses built to the west in the 1940s. The people were Muslims; they worshipped in the village mosque and kept a shrine for a local religious figure, Shaykh Salama. The 1931 census counted 315 people in 67 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 450, on 4,502 dunums of which 693 were under cereals and 728 irrigated or orchard, 186 of those in olives. The land carried vineyards, olives, almonds, vegetables and grain, some rainfed and some watered from the village springs, and the wild growth on the slopes was used for grazing.
In July 1948, during Operation Dani, the Har’el Brigade was given the task of taking a number of villages to widen the corridor to Jerusalem. Khirbat al-Lawz was occupied on 13–14 July along with a string of its neighbours; Zochrot gives 14 July. The brigade went on holding and patrolling the area at least until the armistice with Transjordan in April 1949, and Benny Morris records that many refugees who stayed in the area or tried to return during those months were forcibly expelled. He describes one incident in November 1948 in which a Har’el platoon confronted dozens of refugees moving westward near the village, ordered them out of Israeli-held territory and confiscated their livestock.
No Israeli settlement was built on the village’s land. Grass and thorn grow among the stone rubble and the terraces across the whole site, with almond, fig and carob among them. A thick forest of cypress and fir has been planted around it, and in the forest to the south there is a well surrounded by almond and fig trees. The forest is dedicated to the memory of Moshe Dayan.
Sources
- Khirbat al-Lawz — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest)
- Khirbat al-Lawz — Zochrot, drawn from Walid Khalidi, All That Remains (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)
Cited works
2- palquest.org — khirbat al lawz(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17054/khirbat-al-lawz
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49241/en
Connected in the archive
27 connected records27 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Ein Karemعين كارم
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: A secondary road linked it eastward to 'Ayn Karim, and so to Jerusalem.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Khirbat al-Lawz stood on the southern side of a mountain crest 750 metres up, about eleven kilometres west of Jerusalem, looking out south, east and west.
names this place — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Satafصَطاف
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The forest planted around the site by the Jewish National Fund is an extension of the Moshe Dayan forest planted on the lands of Khirbat al-Lawz.
in the same district — 24 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.
- 'Islinعِسْلِين
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.
- and 18 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Khirbat al-Lawz.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/khirbat-al-lawz.- MLA
“Khirbat al-Lawz.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/khirbat-al-lawz. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-khirbat-al-lawz, title = {Khirbat al-Lawz}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/khirbat-al-lawz}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }