James Morris

al-Ghabisiyya, district of Acre

al-Ghabisiyya, district of Acre

The Muslim village was allocated to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition plan. It surrendered in May 1948 during operation Ben Ami, but Carmeli troops "entered the village with guns blazing", killing several inhabitants in revenge for participation in a previous attack on a Jewish convoy. Many dispersed villagers remained in Israel and attempted to return to the village, in response it was declared a closed military area in 1950. Despite a high court ruling in the villagers favour, the land was appropriated by the state in 1952. A neighbouring kibbutz which had started cultivating village land, declared “Arabs of Ghabisiyya should on no account be allowed to return to their village". The village was destroyed in 1955 apart from the mosque and cemetery. In 1972 a committee of ex villagers requested permission to maintain these remains, but permission was refused. In 1994 the committee began renovating the Mosque and praying there. In 1996 the Israel Land Authority sealed the mosque. On appeal to Prime Minister Shimon Peres the committee received a reply on his behalf: "The government of Israel regards itself as obligated to maintain the holy places of all religions, including, of course, cemeteries and mosques sacred to Islam. The prime minister has stated that the government would see to the renovation and the restoration of the dignity of mosques in abandoned villages, including the mosque in Ghabisiyya." In 1997 Police removed copies of the Quran and prayer rugs and resealed the mosque. In the following court case the ILA declared "The village of Ghabisiyya was abandoned by its inhabitants and destroyed during the War for Independence".... [the mosque..had stood].."lonely and neglected"..."and since it was in a run-down and unstable state that constituted a threat to the safety of those inside it, it was decided by the Ministry of Religions to seal it and fence it off." The villagers continue to pray on land outside the mosque.

Kafr Bir’im, district of Acre

Kafr Bir’im, district of Acre

By 1948 Bir'im had a population of 1050 people, made up of both Maronite and Melkite Christians. Relations with Jewish settlers were very strong; when Zionist troops arrived at the village on 29th October 1948 they were received by the village priests with a white flag and food. On the 13th November the entire population was forcibly expelled from the village with a promised they would be allowed to return at a later date. After living rough through the winter villagers were eventually resettled in the houses of expelled Muslims in the neighbouring village of Jish. In 1953 the villagers won a case in the High Court which permitted them to return to their homes; the following day the Israeli army declared the area a military zone and that afternoon bombarded the village from the air, watched by the returning population from a place they have since called ‘the crying hill’. Though the villagers political campaign continues to this day the village site is now an archeological park and a third century synagogue has been reconstructed amongst the ruins of Kafr Bir’im. The villagers have to pay an entrance fee to visit the site, but are allowed to use the restored church on religious holidays. The park information focuses on the locations ancient Jewish history, a small mention of an Arab village is made in the final paragraph.

Iqrit, district of Acre.

Iqrit, district of Acre.

Situated on a hill top close to the Lebanese border, the village featured in both Canaanite and Crusader history. By 1945 it had the relatively modest number of 50 houses, a predominantly Melkite Christian population and some 25 square kilometres of land. The village was captured on the 31st October 1948, after most of northern Galilee had fallen. 10 days later the entire population was expelled as part of the campaign to create an ‘Arab-less border strip’; they were informed they would soon be able to return. Some left for Lebanon but most were moved to a village further south where they lived as internal refuges. In 1951 the military authorities took village elders to a hillside near Iqrit to watch the old stone houses being blown up with dynamite and tank fire. Villagers have used petitions, court cases and parliament to try to establish a right of return. In 1972 Golda Meir stated, ‘It is not only consideration of security [that prevent] an official decision regarding Bi’rim and Iqrit, but the desire to avoid [setting] a precedent. We cannot allow ourselves to become more and more entangled and to reach a point from which we are unable to extricate ourselves.’ Villagers are allowed to hold a church service once a month, and tend the cemetery.

Mausoleum of Nabi Yamin, district of Tulkarm

Mausoleum of Nabi Yamin, district of Tulkarm

A Mamluk era domed shrine, and a site of Muslim veneration since the thirteenth century, the mausoleum has been reinterpreted by an ultra orthodox Jewish group as the burial place of their Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob; despite it never having previously had significance as a Jewish shrine.

Eilabun, district of Tiberias

Eilabun, district of Tiberias

With a history traceable back to the sixteenth century, the predominantly Christian village had a population of around 550 by 1945. In September 1948, during a local procession, the decapitated heads of two IDF soldiers missing after an attack on a military outpost, were carried through the streets. Eilabun fell to Israeli forces on 30th October, after which the villagers took refuge in the church and raised a white flag in surrender. Rather than spare the Christian village, as was common in large parts of central Gallilee, the Golani brigade, angered by stories of the procession, ordered the population to gather in the village square from where they took seventeen young men prisoner and expelled the remaining population to neighbouring Maghar. Twelve of the prisoners were executed at different points around the square, so as to make it look as if they died in battle. Two elderly un-armed Palestinian men were also shot dead that day. The soldiers looted both the village and the villagers and, using the remaining five men as a human shield, transported the refugees in cattle trucks to the Lebanese border. Numerous Christian religious leaders and some Israelis opposed the expulsion and appeals were made to the Vatican to intervene. Despite political opposition in Israel, Eilabun refugees were allowed to return from Lebanon in mid 1949. Palestinians who avoided permanent exile lived under military rule within Israel until 1966. Permission to erect a memorial to the executed men at the entrance to the village was refused by the Israeli authorities. The memorial was built and remains in the village cemetery.

Jaba’, district of Haifa.

Jaba’, district of Haifa.

In 1948 Jaba was small agricultural village with a population of 1140 and 158 houses. The first attack on the village took place in February, the New York Times reporting Zionist forces “arriving in two armoured buses, they opened fire, raided a house and smashed up its interior before moving of again”. Strategically located above the coastal highway the village was used by Arab snipers to fire on Jewish traffic. It was heavily bombed from the air before being attacked during the second truce in late July 1948. Its population was expelled to the Jenin district of the West Bank and the village was entirely flattened except for a local shrine. In September UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte condemned Israel’s destruction of villages in the area and demanded that Israel restore at its own expense all houses damaged or destroyed during and after the attack. He also demanded that the estimated 8000 expelled inhabitants from the locality be allowed to return. Israel rejected the demands. On 17th September 1948 Bernadotte was assasinated in Jerusalem on the orders of future prime minster Yitzhak Shamir.  A pine forest and recreational facilities now cover the site. No signposts exist to record the history of the village.

Deir Yassin, district of Jerusalem

Deir Yassin, district of Jerusalem

In 1948 the village of Deir Yassin, situated on the Western edge of Jerusalem, had a population of around 600 people. In January villagers signed a peace agreement with the neighbouring Jewish suburb of Giv’at Shaul, promising to inform on Arab militia activity. On the 9th April the village was attacked by the Jewish Irgun and Lehi Militia (the Stern gang) resulting in the most infamous massacre of non-combatants during the conflict. The militia gunned down villagers in the street and threw hand grenades into occupied houses. Having ransacked and looted the village, survivors were rounded up and paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem as trophy. The Militia initially claimed to have killed 250 people though this is now considered an exaggeration resulting from the excitement of battle. The number of 107 dead has become generally accepted, with a further 25 young prisoners later executed in a nearby quarry. As a consequence fear and panic spread through out the Palestinian population and large numbers began to leave for neighbouring countries and the West bank as refugees . The remaining village houses now form part of a psychiatric institution, and village lands have been occupied by an expanded Giv’at Shaul. The cemetery is abandoned. No memorial exists for the dead.

Huj, district of Gaza.

Huj, district of Gaza.

The village was founded in the early nineteenth century, and by 1945 had a population of 1,040, of which three quarters were Arab and one quarter Jewish. The Arab population were considered to be friendly to the Yishav, and harboured Haganah troops against the British, for which the Mukhtar was shot dead by a local mob in Gaza City in 1947, accused of collaboration. The Palestinian villagers were expelled to the Gaza Strip in May 1948 by the Negev Brigade, and the village looted and blown up. An appeal to be allowed to return, supported by the department of Minority Affairs, was refused by military authorities. In 1998 an estimated 6,000 Huj refugees and their descendants lived in the Gaza strip. These included the medical doctor, peace campaigner and author Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose three daughters were killed in 2009 during Operation Cast Lead when IDF shells were fired at the Jabalia refugee camp. Sycamore Ranch, the former home of Ariel Sharon, occupies 4 square kilometres of the village’s land. He is buried with his second wife Lily on the small hill where the village once stood. The village site is the location of a popular annual anemone festival marking the beginning of spring. The village itself has been completely erased.

Lifta, district of Jerusalem

Lifta, district of Jerusalem

The village site, now almost surrounded by Jerusalem, has been populated since ancient times and was known to Israelites, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders and Ottomans. By the 1940’s it had a predominantly Muslim population of 2550 people. In early 1948 Lifta was occupied and cleared during the Haganah bid to open the western corridor from Tel Aviv into Jerusalem. The Palestinian population became refugees in East Jerusalem and the village lands were divided by the 1949 green line. Village houses were not flattened and Lifta remained the only one of the six cleared but not destroyed Palestinian villages, not to have been repopulated by Jewish citizens. Under the 1950 Absentee Property Law Palestinian villagers have been refused permission to reoccupy houses that they, or their ancestors once owned. In 1987, the Israeli Nature Reserves Authority announced it would restore the “long-abandoned village” and turn it into an open-air natural history and study center that would “stress the Jewish roots of the site.” In 2004 a redevelopment project proposed to turn the site into a luxury residential and commercial neighbourhood. In 2011 the Israel Land Administration requested tenders for bids for Lifta’s land. In February 2012 the Administrative Court in Jerusalem ruled in favour of a request to cancel the ILA sale by Lifta refugees. The site of the mosque has been transformed into a mikveh – a Jewish ritual bath.

Assir village (unrecognised), al-Naqab/Negev

Assir village (unrecognised), al-Naqab/Negev

Before 1948 the Negev Bedouin made up the vast majority of the population of Beersheba district (al-Naqab/Negev), living as nomadic desert pastoralists. During and shortly after the 1948 conflict the majority were either expelled or fled to the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan or the Sinai. The remaining population was forcibly relocated to an enclosed zone in the north east of the district covering only 10% of their former territory; remaining under military law until 1966. Within the borders of this zone more than half of the population refused to take up residence in the officially established townships, often because they believed the land belonged to members of another Bedouin group, and as such, under Bedouin law, they did not have the right to reside there. As Israeli Law does not recognize traditional Bedouin ownership rights, the villages that they established are considered illegal under Israeli law and are classified as ‘unrecognised’. As such they receive little or no services such water, electricity, paved roads, health care and rocket sirens. Under a law passed in September 2011, 30,000 Bedouin will be relocated from these unrecognized villages into planned towns. The Bedouin were not consulted and the majority oppose the law. 2000 square kilometers of land currently under Bedouin control will be confiscated. The unrecognized villages will be razed.