Lydda and Ramle: from Palestinian-Arab to Israeli towns, 1948-67.

Wartime spatial changes are usually rapid and sweeping, after which the landscape looks very different from what it did in the past. (1) This results from the wide-scale use of powerful weapons that cause partial or complete destruction of urban and rural areas, cultivated land, and transportation and energy infrastructure. The use of weapons also causes casualties among populations of war-stricken areas and forces many of those who survive to flee, making them refugees. The termination of hostilities brings about a reorganization of space intended to suit post-war political, economic, demographic, and social conditions. In many cases, demographic, economic, and social structures, as well as the landscape form of war-stricken areas, are not restored to the pre-war design.

During the first half of the twentieth century, wartime spatial transformation was widespread as a result of the two world wars, wars between countries, civil wars, and wars stemming from the demise of empires. (2) The phenomenon of wartime spatial transformation did not bypass the State of Israel. During and following the 1948 war, which resulted in the establishment of an independent Jewish state, wide areas formerly inhabited by Arabs became Jewish. Arab rural landscapes were almost entirely eradicated during the first years of the State of Israel. Most of the villages were destroyed, the land was redistributed, and the cultivation methods and choice of crops were changed. A modern Jewish Zionist landscape emerged, consisting primarily of collective (kibbutz) and cooperative (moshav) settlements. (3) In the urban areas the picture was more complex. The need to provide living quarters and employment for the thousands of Jewish immigrants arriving every month between May 1948 and the end of 1951 meant housing many of them in structures abandoned by the Palestinian Arabs in central and peripheral urban centres. (4)

Jewish repopulation of Arab urban neighbourhoods and towns led to the incorporation of the (former) Palestinian Arab sector, which had developed separately during the late Ottoman and the British Mandate periods, in the Jewish urban sector, and to the creation of an Israeli urban system. This article illustrates this process in the cases of Lydda and Ramle, the expulsion of most of whose Palestinian Arab population in 1948 was followed by their emergence as Israeli towns during the 1950s and 1960s, the formative decades of the State of Israel.

Lydda is one of Palestine's most ancient cities, dating from 6000 BCE. (5) It attained its highest status shortly after the Arab conquest of Palestine in the seventh century CE, when, with Jerusalem, it was designated one of the two cities that would serve as the ruling centre for the province (ajand) of Palestine. At the beginning of the eighth century the Umayyad governor founded a new city by the name of Ramle on a site approximately three kilometers northeast of Lydda, and made it the provincial capital. The importance attributed to these two cities was due to their proximity to Palestine's two main highways. The first--the longitudinal road linking Egypt with Syria--was a major route joining the northern and southern sections of the Umayyad Empire. The second was more regional, connecting the coastal plane with Jerusalem on the way to Transjordan. (6) This location would still be crucial to the development of Ramle and Lydda more than a thousand years later, in the nineteenth century, at the start of the modern era in the history of Palestine.

From the end of the eighteenth century the influence and involvement of European powers in the eastern Mediterranean basin, including Palestine, grew steadily. (7) Jerusalem was the focus of Europe's attention in Palestine, so the essence of European activity centred on the route connecting the landlocked holy city to the port town of Jaffa. The proximity of Ramle and Lydda to this route underlay their rapid development from then until the outbreak of the 1948 war. Their growth rate increased from the late 1860s, with the paving of a modern commercial road that allowed passage by wagon, and again in 1892, with the construction of the first railway line between Jaffa and Jerusalem. (8)

Modern transportation means were the main stimulus for agricultural development. The inhabitants of Lydda and Ramle enlarged cultivated areas to produce surpluses which, thanks to the expanded transportation infrastructure, could be delivered to the expanding markets of Jerusalem and Jaffa. The new transportation infrastructure also promoted the growth of the new profitable citrus industry from the Jaffa area up to the vicinity of Lydda and Ramle. It also enhanced the traditional light industry based on the many olive plantations near to the two towns, affording the effective marketing of large quantities of olive oil and soap shipped from Jaffa to Egypt. Commerce also developed in Ramle and Lydda as they became road service centres for passengers from Jaffa to Jerusalem and market centres for surrounding villages. Economic development also resulted in substantial population growth in both towns (Table 1). (10)

The urban development of Ramle and Lydda accelerated during the British Mandate. The significant rise in population numbers (Table 1) led to an increase in the built-up areas of both towns. The boundaries of the ancient town nuclei were torn down and new neighbourhoods established in their vicinity. Thanks to British town-planning legislation, the new neighbourhoods were equipped with modern road systems and infrastructure for urban services. The structures in the new neigbbourhoods were quite different from the ancient ones. They were larger and built according to a hybrid architectural style that included both western and traditional oriental elements. (11)

In the early 1920s the British located Palestine's main railway junction west of Lydda, and in 1935 opened an international airport north of the town. (12) These expanded the employment potential for the local population, but were not enough to change the economic environment. Lydda and Ramle remained oil and soap manufacturing centres and continued to plant olive trees and citrus groves, with the addition of the vegetable crop industry. Local entrepreneurs had no interest in or capacity for investing in the development of modern industries. The policy of the Mandatory government encouraged a free market economy and rejected government capital investment in development projects that did not serve British imperial interests. Consequent to the exacerbation of the Jewish-Arab conflict, economic relations with the rapidly developing Jewish urban system nearby were restricted to the marketing of fresh agricultural produce. (13)

The partition plan accepted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947, included Lydda and Ramle in the territory of the future Palestinian Arab state. When fighting erupted, Ramle became one of the focal points for blocking Jewish transportation. As a result, transportation from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv was shifted to a southern bypass, and Jewish Hagana semi-regular forces responded with raids on Ramle, which also damaged Arab transportation. As fighting intensified during the early months of 1948, the Hagana command began to prepare for the possibility of an invasion by the armies of Arab states in mid-May, when British rule was to end. The operational plan put together for this purpose was called Plan D (Dalet) and it was to be implemented during the week before the end of the British Mandate. Accordingly, Jewish forces were to besiege both Lydda and Ramle to thwart potential attacks on adjacent Jewish settlements. (14)

Due to scarcity in the Jewish fighting cadre, the plan was not implemented in the Lydda and Ramle region. Nevertheless, the effects of the war reached them at the end of April and early May 1948. Following the Arab defeat in the battle for Jaffa, thousands of Palestinians from this major Arab city and its rural periphery found refuge in both Lydda and Ramle. Most refugees lived in makeshift housing they set up in open areas, were a burden on local economies, and spread demoralization among the inhabitants. (15)

From mid-May Jewish forces began attacking Ramle. Militarily, these attacks were not successful and were repelled by well-organized local Arab forces. (16) Nonetheless, the Jewish pressure did exert a cumulative effect on the stamina of Ramle's civilian population. Economic distress was another factor intensifying the impact of the military action. Ramle's food shortage led to higher prices of many products, and many …