Lydda 2.3

Lod is a mixed Jewish-Arab city 15km southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2012, it had a population of 71,060.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod, and was a significant Judean town from the Maccabean Period to the early Christian period. By modern times the city had only retained a very small Jewish community, who were forced to leave by the 1921 Arab riots. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War most of the cities Arab inhabitants were expelled in the 1948 Palestinian exodus from Lydda and Ramle. The town was resettled by Jewish immigrants, most of them refugees from Arab countries, alongside 1,056 Arabs who remained.Israel's main international airport, Ben Gurion International Airport (previously known as Lydda Airport, RAF Lydda, and Lod Airport) is located on the outskirts of the city.EtymologyThe Hebrew name Lod appears in the Bible as a town of Benjamin, founded by Shamed or Shamer . In the New Testament, it appears as its Greek form, Lydda. The city also finds reference in an Islamic Hadith, as the location of the battlefield where Dajjal will be slain before the Day of Judgment.