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Updated: June 14, 2025
The right column was to march from El Muntar to Ekteif, the centre column to proceed along the Jerusalem-Jericho road between the highway and the wadi Farah, and the left column was to go forward by the Tawil-Jebel Kuruntul track. The 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade were, if possible, to make Nebi Musa.
It was here that he removed the city gates and carried them to the summit of Ali Muntar, "to the top of an hill that is before Hebron," and it was here that he took hold of the two middle pillars, and, bowing himself with all his might, destroyed the temple of Dagon with the thousands of Philistines that were his tormentors. The whole history of Gaza is steeped in blood.
Nearly all Abdallah's artillery was left behind in a gun park at Jaffa owing to lack of transport, and though he had a numerically superior force he did not like Napoleon's dispositions, and retreated when Kleber moved up the plain to pass between Gaza and the sea, and the cavalry advanced east of the Mound of Hebron, or Ali Muntar, as we know the hill up which Samson is reputed to have carried the gates and bar of Gaza.
But Ali Muntar stoutly resisted the heavy shells' attack. As if Samson's feat had endowed it with some of the strong man's powers, Muntar for a long time received its daily thumps stoically; but by degrees the resistance of the old hill declined, and when agents reported that the sheikh's tomb was used as an observation post, 8-inch howitzers got on to it and made it untenable.
Slowly the range increased 2400 2600 2800 until the enemy had passed out of reach of the guns; then for the first time since early morning we ceased fire. But elsewhere on the front the situation was almost in statu quo. Though the Welshmen had, as stated, carried Samson's Ridge and had even advanced some miles along the coast, Ali Muntar still remained untaken.
Throughout the night and during the greater part of the day of February 20 the right column were fighting under many difficulties. In their march from the hill of Muntar they had to travel over ground so cracked and strewn with boulders that in many parts the brigade could only proceed in single file.
By two o'clock in the afternoon the 22nd Brigade got into Ain Arik and found a strong force of the enemy holding Beitunia and the hill of Muntar, a few hundred yards to the north of it, thus barring the way to Ramallah and Bireh. Rain fell copiously and the wind was chilly. After a miserable night in bivouac, the 6th Brigade was astir before daylight on the 21st.
The land guns searched the Turks' front line and reserve systems, while the Navy fired on Fryer's Hill to the north of Ali Muntar, Sheikh Redwan, a sandhill with a native chief's tomb on the crest, north of Gaza, and on trenches not easily reached by the Corps' guns.
The chief of these was the place to which Samson carried the gates of Gaza: Ali Muntar how familiar we were destined to be with that name! a great, bleak rock, whose terraced slopes rose far above the rest and commanded a wide field of fire over the plains of Gaza.
At daylight the 75th Division pushed on over the other hills towards Ali Muntar and gained that dominating position before eight o'clock.
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