Gaza district · depopulated 1948 · 2 min read
Tall al-Turmus
تَلّ التُرْمُس
Tall al-Turmus stood on a low hill northeast of Gaza, a village of 760 whose name joined the Arabic words for hill and lupine. It had a mosque and shared a school of about 160 pupils with Qastina. Sources disagree on the exact occupation date: PalQuest places it around 9–10 July 1948 during Operation An-Far, while Zochrot lists 1 July. Khalidi's 1992 survey recorded house rubble among cactus, sycamore and eucalyptus, with the surrounding land farmed.
See Tall al-Turmus on the Atlas31.7250°N · 34.7727°ETall al-Turmus stood on a low hill on the southern coastal plain, with Wadi Marj running along its southern edge. Secondary roads linked it to nearby villages and to the highway southwest toward al-Majdal. PalQuest, drawing on All That Remains (1992), says residents described Tall al-Turmus as having been founded more than a century earlier. Its name held the landscape in two words: tall, a hill, and turmus, the lupine that grew around it.
The village’s Muslim residents built first on the hill in adobe and later extended the houses east and west. There was a mosque, and Tall al-Turmus shared a school with Qastina, about one and a half kilometres away; enrolment reached about 160 in the middle of the 1940s. The cited records disagree on the 1931 population: PalQuest gives 504 and Palestine Remembered gives 540, while both report 136 houses. The 1944/45 survey counted 760. Grain, vegetables and fruit sustained the village. Of the Arab-held land recorded in that survey, 10,328 dunums carried cereals, 627 were irrigated or used for orchards, and 154 were planted in citrus and bananas. A nearby khirba held an ancient well.
The exact day the village was taken is not settled. PalQuest, drawing on All That Remains, places the occupation around 9–10 July 1948, early in Operation An-Far, by the Giv’ati Brigade’s First Battalion. Palestine Remembered gives 9 July. Zochrot’s locality record instead lists 1 July. The first two dates align with PalQuest’s dated operation record, which begins on 8 July, but the disagreement remains in the published record and is retained here. PalQuest says the villagers may have been among the minority expelled westward across an Israeli-held strip toward Gaza rather than east toward Hebron; the qualification matters because the source does not establish that route as certain.
Timmorim was established on village land in 1954. Khalidi’s 1992 site survey recorded house rubble among clumps of cactus and stands of sycamore and eucalyptus, with the surrounding land cultivated by Israeli farmers.
Sources
Cited works
3- palquest.org — tall al turmus(opens in a new tab)https://www.palquest.org/en/place/17158/tall-al-turmus
- palestineremembered.com — index(opens in a new tab)https://www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/Tall-al-Turmus/index.html
- zochrot.org — en(opens in a new tab)https://www.zochrot.org/villages/village_details/49507/en
Connected in the archive
36 connected records36 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.
- All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: PalQuest, drawing on All That Remains (1992), says residents described Tall al-Turmus as having been founded more than a century earlier.
- Hebronالخليل
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: PalQuest says the villagers may have been among the minority expelled westward across an Israeli-held strip toward Gaza rather than east toward Hebron; the qualification matters because the source does not establish that route as certain.
names this place — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Qastinaقسطينة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Its elementary school, founded in 1936 and shared with neighboring Tall al-Turmus, had 161 pupils by the mid-1940s.
in the same district — 33 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- 'Iraq al-Manshiyyaعِراق المَنْشِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Gaza district.
- Al-Falujaالفالوجة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Gaza district.
- Al-Jiyyaالجِيَّة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Gaza district.
- Al-Juraالجُورَة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Gaza district.
- Al-Majdalالمجدل
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Gaza district.
- Al-Masmiyya al-Kabiraالمَسْمِيَّة الكَبِيرَة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Both recorded in the Gaza district.
- and 27 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Tall al-Turmus.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/memory/tall-al-turmus.- MLA
“Tall al-Turmus.” Village Memory, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/memory/tall-al-turmus. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-tall-al-turmus, title = {Tall al-Turmus}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/memory/tall-al-turmus}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }