Al-Lajjūn – Jenīn District
Maḥmūd Muḥammad Maḥmūd (left)
speaking from Umm el-Faḥem – Jenīn District
Three generations of the Maḥmūd family
From left: Maḥmūd
Muḥammad Maḥmūd with his wife on their wedding day; Maḥmūd
Muḥammad Maḥmūd’s grandfather, Maḥmūd, who lived to be more than
100; Maḥmūd Muḥammad Maḥmūd’s father, Muḥammad Maḥmūd
It was around two in the morning when the Jews began to attack our village. It was the night of May 30, 1948, and I was twelve years old. The evacuations and massacres at Tel Hanan, al-Tantūra, and Deir Yasīn [April 9] were fresh in our memory, so we knew what the Jews were capable of. The Jordanian army had withdrawn a few days earlier, saying there would be replacements. But no replacements came and we were forced to flee without protection. We left in small groups and scattered in all directions, so it was impossible to know where the others went. As with my own family, many villagers had already fled from Haifa in an earlier round of attacks. Some families moved three times, each time believing that they were far enough from the fighting and would be protected by the Jordanian army. So we had to flee again, and apart from our two horses, which we were able to take with us, we left everything else behind. The village was completely deserted by the time the Israelis captured it.
We reached Umm el-Faḥem, but we had no food, so we had to sneak back into the village to steal from our own stocks. The Jews, thinking we might return to retrieve our things, had placed booby traps underneath all the crates, so when we lifted them they would explode. One of our neighbors, Hassan Sukkar, went back for some of his possessions and was killed in his own home. We also found the body of another neighbor, Abu Rummān Yūnis, and buried him before we left.
In the days after the attack, the occupying forces destroyed some of the houses. Then the following year the Kibbutz Megiddo was built on our land, and eventually nearly all the houses were destroyed—all except some of the stronger stone-built houses, which were incorporated into the kibbutz. Our mosque became the carpentry shop and the property was fenced off. I remember that the grave of Yūsuf Hamdan, who was killed by the British Army along with fourteen others in a fierce battle on the outskirts of the village, is in that cemetery. You will find it in a state of disrepair within the kibbutz.
It is my wish to die on that land where we once had 1,000 dunams [247 acres]. Al-Lajjūn was like a paradise for us. The land was rich and fertile, and it was easy to cultivate. I used to take the horses into the fields to graze. In the summer, after haymaking, all the nearby villages would gather for a wrestling competition. And during Eid, the holiday after Ramadan, our neighbors would go to one another’s houses to share in the celebrations. We lived as one big family. Years later I went back to the village and took home some of the earth from my land.
When I sleep, I dream that I am with my brother Said who taught me how to plow. I can remember my father stopping us in the middle of our work, telling us to make the plowing arc even wider, to cover more land.