PLace

Qazaza

Place
Qazaza — قَزازَة
District
Lydda
Subdistrict
Ramla
Average Elevation
150 m
Distance from Al Ramla
19 km
Population
Year Arab Total
1931 649
1944/45 940 940
Land Ownership (1944/45) in dunums
Year Arab Public Total
1944/45 14272 4557 18829
Land Use (1944/45) in dunums
Use Arab Public Total
Non-Cultivable & Built-up (Total)
Use Arab Public Total
Non-Cultivable 2347 629 2976
Built-up 37 1 38
2384 630 3014 (16%)
Cultivable (Total)
Use Arab Public Total
Cereal 11757 3927 15684
Plantation and Irrigable 131 131
11888 3927 15815 (84%)
Number of Houses (1931)
150

The village was built in a hilly area on the eastern edge of the central coastal plain. Two secondary roads linked it to the highway between Gaza and the Ramla-Jerusalem highway, and one of them also ended at the Wadi al-Sarar railway station (on the line between Ramla and Jerusalem), 3 km due north, A European traveler reported that he passed through Qazaza in the 1860s on his way to examine a nearby tell. The village layout, which was rectangular in shape and extended in a north-south direction, was divided into a northern section, a middle section (which was the oldest part of the village), and a southern section. Its houses, built of cement, stone, and mud, were clustered together. The residents of Qazaza, who were predominantly Muslim, maintained a village mosque, and some of them owned shops. An elementary school was established in Qazaza in 1922. The people of Qazaza, Sajad, and Jilya established one common school for all three villages; it had 127 students at the time of its founding in 1945. The village's agricultural economy relied on rainfall and was based on grain, vegetables, and fruits. In 1944/45 a total of 11,757 dunums was allocated to cereals; 131 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.

The first recorded attack on Qazaza occurred in the early morning of 20 December 1947, according to press reports. Just after midnight, a group of Zionist attackers moved into the outskirts of the village and opened fire on Qazaza. The firing continued intermittently for three hours and was followed by a barrage of grenades. The New York Times reported that the mukhtar's house was also dynamited. The Palestinian newspaper Filastin said that the villagers responded to the attack with gunfire. The British police estimated that during the firefight, one villager was killed and two were wounded, including one woman; the Haganah said Arab losses were 'much greater.' The police reportedly tried to pursue the attackers but failed, according to the Times.

On 9-10 July 1948, units of the Giv'ati Brigade's First Battalion overran the village in an offensive mounted just as the first truce of the war was ending. One of the declared aims of the operation, known as An-Far, was to expel over 20,000 inhabitants from an arc of territory south of Ramla. The History of the War of Independence refers to 'clearing operations in the brigade's rear guard to eliminate the threat and danger posed by the presence of Arab civilian concentrations at the rear of the front.' However, Israeli historian Benny Morris claims that direct expulsion of civilians was unnecessary, as they fled on their own when Israeli columns approached their villages. Like other residents of the area, the people of Qazaza were probably displaced to the Hebron area,

The settlement of Tirosh (139128), founded in 1955, is close to the village site but stands on the land of the destroyed village of 'Ajjur, across the sub-disctrict boundary, in the Hebron sub-disctrict. The site itself is in a fenced-in military base and is inaccessible.

The site is within an inaccessible military zone.

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