The village stood on a low hill on the coastal plain. Wadi Marj passed along its southern perimeter. Secondary roads linked it to neighboring villages and to a highway that led to the city of al-Majdal, to the southwest. According to the inhabitants, Tall al-Turmus was founded over one hundred years ago. Its name apparently refers to the vegetation in the surrounding area; tall means "hill" in Arabic and turmus means "lupine" (a kind of herb).
Its residents, all of them Muslims, constructed their houses of adobe, building them first on the hill and later expanding the village site eastward and westward. The village had its own mosque. It shared a school with the village of Qastina, about 1.5 km to the northwest (see Qastina, Gaza District). Enrollment in the school reached 160 students in the mid-1940s. Agriculture represented the mainstay of the economy. The community cultivated grain, vegetables, and fruit. In 1944/45 a total of 154 dunums was devoted to citrus and bananas and 10,328 dunums were planted in cereals; 627 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Next to it lay a khirba with an ancient well.
