Lod (Hebrew: לוֹד; Arabic: اَلْلُدّْ, al-Ludd; Greco-Latin Lydda) is a city located on the Sharon Plain 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2007, it had a population of 67,000, roughly 80 percent Jewish and 20 percent Arab.
The city has been known as Lydda in the English-speaking world throughout most of its existence. When it was conquered in July 1948 by Israel, tens of thousands of its Palestinian inhabitants were expelled and the city was settled by Jewish immigrants.[1] Since then, it has been known as Lod, its biblical name.[2]
Israel's main international airport, Ben Gurion International Airport (previously called Lydda Airport, RAF Lydda, and Lod Airport) is located in the city.
- ^ Morris, Benny. (2004) The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press, pp. 414-461.
- ^ Yacobi, Haim. The Jewish-Arab City, Taylor & Francis, 2009, p. 29: "The occupation of Lydda by Israel in the 1948 war did not allow the realization of Pocheck's garden city vision. Different geopolitics and ideologies began to shape Lydda's urban landscape ... [and] its name was changed from Lydda to Lod, which was the region's biblical name."; also see Pearlman, Moshe and Yannai, Yacov. Historical sites in Israel. Vanguard Press, 1964, p. 160.