al-Haditha

The village was situated on a hilly spot on the eastern edge of the central coastal plain, on the west bank of Wadi al-Natuf. It was 1 km east of a main road connecting Lydda, Bayt Nabala, and other villages farther north and was linked to it by a secondary road. Al-Haditha was also connected by secondary roads to a number of neighboring villages. It has been identified with the Biblical locality of Hadid (Ezra 2:33), where 720 Jewish exiles returning from Babylon were settled. The site may have been the Hellenistic 'Adida which was fortified by Simon Maccabeus (1 Maccabees 12:38). Architectural fragments in the village attest to its long history. The Byzantine historian Eusebius (A.D. 260-339), who was born in Palestine (Caesarea), wrote that the village was east of Lydda. In the nineteenth century the French traveller Guérin, who visited Palestine several times, wrote that al-Haditha stood on top of a hill and consisted of several houses.

Al-Haditha originally had a trapezoidal layout that became rectangular, toward the end of the Mandate, as the village expanded. Its houses were clustered around the center, which contained a mosque, a small marketplace, and an elementary school, founded in 1924, which had an enrollment of forty-two students in 1943. All of the people living in al-Haditha were Muslims. Their main economic activity was agriculture, and their most important crops were grain and olives. In 1944/45 a total of 10 dunums was devoted to citrus and bananas and 4,419 dunums were allotted to cereals; 246 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, of which about 200 dunums were olive groves.