Summary
An Arab village about fifteen kilometres from Abu Ghosh whose surrounding fields, including ninety dunams in Umm Khaled’s husband’s name, remained on the Israeli side of the border after 1948 while the village itself wound up on the Jordanian side; in the 1967 war the village was captured by Israel from Jordan and was later razed to the ground, as the end note in Three Mothers, Three Daughters states (Three Mothers, Three Daughters: Palestinian Women’s Stories, lines 1306, 1788).
Details
- Before 1948 farmers in hill villages like Abu Ghosh often owned land on the plains around Emwas and either worked it themselves or rented it out; Umm Khaled’s husband’s ninety dunams there were flat land, good for wheat, corn and sesame, sharecropped out for part of the harvest (Three Mothers, Three Daughters: Palestinian Women’s Stories, lines 1306, 1788).
- In 1948 the Israeli army conquered that land and the family never got it back, though they still keep the papers proving it theirs; Abu Khaled refused to claim it — “Their army is sitting on it. The most they’ll do is offer me a few agorot for it, so forget it. It’s gone.” — and told his wife the Jews were farming it, growing guavas (line 1306).
- After Abu Khaled’s death Umm Khaled kept his old papers, half-eaten by mice, among them the papers saying the ninety dunams down by Emwas belong to him (line 1506).
- The village itself, on the Jordanian side after 1948, was captured by Israel in the 1967 war and later razed to the ground (line 1788).
Related pages
Three Mothers, Three Daughters: Palestinian Women’s Stories, Umm Khaled, Abu Ghosh, Leila