Umm, ISIS and ...Netanya

From here:

Karen sat in a hotel room in Istanbul, grappling with a difficult decision. She had spent about $3,500 (£2,220) on the round trip to Turkey from her home in the US but, when she had bought the ticket, she had had no intention of flying home. The return bookings were for appearance’s sake. Her SMS mailbox was filled with promises for the future: messages from an Islamic State fighter who had promised to marry her. But as she sat in that Istanbul hotel room, something didn’t feel quite right.
Her prospective groom’s insistence on absolute secrecy had not seemed strange at first. Karen had met him through the swarm of Isis-friendly social media...the hint of danger was part of the glamour and Karen thought she was being careful. She was in her late teens and had recently graduated from high school, where she had been a lonely girl interested in Star Trek and computer programming.
She converted to Islam less than a year before her journey, after watching the news and deciding to learn more about the religion. She had been inspired by Isis’s apparent authenticity – they were as far removed from the west as it seemed possible to be. Her Christian parents worried...Online, she disguised her identity by using a kunya – a traditional Arab title. Karen had created several of these, but mostly she went by Umm Khalid – “mother of Khalid”. The name derived from Khalid bin Walid, a military commander known as the “Sword of God” in the early days of Islam. Umm Khalid was also the name of a Palestinian village that was evacuated in 1948 and swallowed up by the Israeli city of Netanya. The name has its roots in violence inflicted and violence suffered.

I recall that the lands upon which Netanya was built were purchased.  So, I looked it up --- at Wikipedia:

In 1928 members of Bnei Binyamin and Hanote, an organisation set up after Straus was informed of the establishment of the settlement, are said to have purchased 350 acres (1.4 km2) of Umm Khaled (!) lands.

But a pro-Palestinian editor inserted this:

There remains today, however, considerable controversy among Palestinian and Israeli interpretation about whether land was sold (primarily from non-resident Arab land holders) during the British Mandate.

With no footnote or other reference site.

If you check the footnote for the purchase fact, you'll read this:

Oved Ben Ami and Itamar Ben Avi...returned from the U.S. [and] they started looking for land suitable for growing citrus orchards. During their search they came across Sheik Tzalah Hamdan, the ‘muchtar’ (head) of Umm Haled (!) village which was located east of the municipal cultural center of today, and they purchased 350 acres of Umm Haled lands for 5,600 Turkish Lira.

If you go to the Hebrew Wikipedia site, you'll learn that it was on the recommendation of the son of the mayor of Tul Karem who suggested to the potential land buyers that Sheikh Salah Hamdan would be a contact and indeed, he sold them the 1400 dunams and added that the price was cheap since he was simply accepting a symbolic fee for watching over the land for the 2000 years the Jews had been unable to return.

___________
UPDATE   see here, pg. 177-178
___________

Additionally, this entry notes that:

(a) the village existed until 1949.  in 1945 its population was just under 1000 souls.
(b) the Arab village, archaeological excavations have proven, was established on a Jewish village.

By the way, a few buildings, including a moque, still stand.

Moreover, you noticed this (!) I twice inserted?

Well, that's because the Muslim hero's name was Khaled ibn Walid.  And that's why the village was called Umm Khaled.  Not Khalid.

Poor Karen.

But she was lucky, after too much sexting from her intended:

She had flown home to the US after two days in Turkey (“with great photos of Istanbul”, she added, “lol.”). One final piece of information had clinched her decision to call off the Isis marriage...She began to wonder if Abu Muhammad was really who he claimed to be. “Talking to him, I realised that things weren’t right,” she said. She became convinced that Abu Muhammad was not from Isis but the PKK. It was by the grace of God, she told me, that she was still alive and free...She issued some sharp advice. “Brothers lie to get a wife.”

_______________

Here it is/was:

^