Qula

Qula was located in the Lydda district on a strategic route connecting the coastal plain with the Samaria region, in the area now between Rosh HaAyin and Shoham.[1][2] Two reference biographies use different modern reference points: one describes Qula as not far from Modi'in, while another calls it a town near Jaffa.[1][4]

The name reflects the area's layered past. It was associated with a local Crusader fortress, and "Qula" is said to mean "tower" in Turkish; villagers named the settlement for the fortress.[2][3] The surrounding landscape also preserves evidence of earlier settlement. Nearby Migdal Afek was a Jewish settlement during the Second Temple period and was destroyed by the Romans in 67 CE.[2]

During the War of Independence, Alexandroni Brigade forces captured Qula on July 10, 1948, as part of Operation Danny; the villagers fled after the capture.[2] The Arab Legion retook the village five days later. Alexandroni troops then attacked, withdrew, and returned repeatedly before taking Qula finally on July 18. One account describes the struggle as lasting eight days.[2][3]

The battle exacted a heavy toll on Israeli forces. Military registration records listed 28 soldiers from Alexandroni Brigade's Battalion 32 and four from Battalion 33 as killed in the fighting. The memorial stone in the forest bears 31 names, and the cited accounts do not reconcile the difference.[2][3] After the final capture, the village's buildings were demolished.[2]

Hassan Salameh was born in Qula in 1913 and became a Palestinian military commander.[1] A British police briefing from December 1947 described him as "one of the two most active trouble-makers in the country at present."[1] From 1937, he participated in terror attacks during the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, and during the War of Independence he commanded a Palestinian military organization in the Lydda and Ramle area.[1] He was killed on June 2, 1948, while leading an attack on Irgun members holding Rosh HaAyin.[1]

His son, Ali Hassan Salameh, was also born in Qula, in 1940 during the British Mandate, to a wealthy family.[4] Hassan Salameh was identified as his father and was killed during the 1948 war.[4]

In 1950, a transit camp called Givat Koah was established at the site in memory of the Alexandroni Brigade soldiers who fell in the battle. It later developed into a moshav now located about two kilometers west of the former village.[2] The Jewish National Fund planted the former village area as Qula Forest.[2]

Descriptions of the surviving physical traces differ. One account reports scattered remains, including buildings, water cisterns, pools, and cactus hedges that marked the village boundary.[2] Another says the remains can no longer be identified and presents the battle memorial as the principal means of telling the site's story.[5] The forest and surrounding route also contain Crusader-period remains, and a nearby Roman mausoleum at Hurvat Mazor preserves further evidence of the area's long settlement history.[2]

Several accounts of Qula's 1948 history require attribution. Ilan Pappé places the occupation of Qula immediately before the second truce of July 1948 and interprets it within a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing; this is his historical framing.[6] He also summarizes oral recollections alleging sexual violence in Qula in June, but the cited passage does not independently corroborate those recollections.[6] Separately, the National Library of Israel catalog lists Susan Slyomovics's chapter "The rape of Qula, a destroyed Palestinian village" in the 2007 volume Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory; the catalog supplies no evidence or context for the title's characterization.[7] These points are therefore presented as attributed interpretations or allegations rather than independently established findings.