Tour and signposting in Isdud

photos by Eitan Reich and Adi Kemmelgren

Until 1948, this structure in the village of Isdud was once a roadside coffeehouse on the way to Gaza. On our tour on Friday, August 15, 2003 we marked the name of the village in Hebrew and Arabic on two walls of the coffeehouse. With cardboard paper and spray paint we returned the name of the village to the landscape.

Abdullah Zaqut told us about the village and the expulsion. He said: “Not long ago I went to visit the village and I saw a family here. The father was telling them things about the area. I told him: ‘I lived here.’ He was very surprised and said, ‘But there was nothing here except an old hovel.’ I said: ‘No way! There was a village with 4,000 people and that is where I lived.’” Abdullah told us about the war of 1948. He was among those who fought to stay and therefore he feared for his life.

We saw the gravesite of Sheikh Ahmed Abu Akbal standing in good condition in the heart of a watermelon field. The ground was full of ceramic shards, signs of the life that existed here until 1948.

The Isdud School for Girls is located inside a closed private area, and most of its former students are today in Gaza. Abdullah told us that the school building was completed just before the expulsion of 1948, so that in fact it was never used. Abdullah had been a teacher in the boys’ school in the village.


Sign outside the Isdud School for Girls: "Private Property! Trespassing and Hunting Forbidden!"

The poet Sami Shalom Chetrit, a neighbor from Ashdod, told us that as a child from Morocco he knew absolutely nothing about the Arabs who lived in the area. Sami read from his “Poems in Ashdod-ish.” In Isdud they had a special flavor.


Author Sami Shalom Chetrit