Kafr Bir'im

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Ruins of ancient synagogue near village

Kafr Bir'im (also known as Biram Kfar and Berem Arabic كفر برعم) was a Melkite Catholic Arab village in the British Mandate of Palestine. The village was in the territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan (Benvenisti, 2002). According to Morris (1994, p.281) the villagers were outright expelled by the Israel Army in November 1948, (together with the villagers of Ikrit, Nabi Rubin, and Tarbikha) "without Cabinet knowledge, debate, or approval -though, almost inevitably, they received post facto Cabinet endorsement." Kafr Bir'im´s inhabitants and their descendants are still fighting for the right to return.

1 Description of village
2 1948, and after
3 Today
4 References
5 See also
6 External links and references

[edit] Description of village

Kafr Bir'im is located in Upper Galilee in Israel, 4 kilometers south of the Lebanese border, and 11.5 km north west of Safad. The village is about 750 meters above sea level, with the church situated at the highest altitude in the village, at 752 m. The present church is built on top of the structures of an ancient church which is believed to have been destroyed in an earthquake in 1837. A census in 1948 showed 1,050 inhabitants of the village. Today the villagers and their descendants number about 2,000 people in Israel. In addition there are villagers and descendants in Lebanon (as some were deported there in November 1948) and in western countries.[1]

[edit] 1948, and after

The town was captured October 31, 1948 by the Israel Defense Forces during operation Hiram. The village was located in an area which IDF wanted, for security reasons, populated only with Jews. In November 1948 most of the inhabitants were evacuated by the IDF "temporarily" to the town of Jish further south "until the military operations are over". Archbishop Elias Chacour relates in his autobiography how IDF in the spring of 1949 rounded up all the men and older boys in the village (including his own father and three eldest brothers), and trucked them to the border with Jordan. There they were let out and ordered to go to Jordan. The soldiers opened fire, aiming just above their heads, meaning to drive them from their homeland for good. However, Chacour´s father and brothers managed to make it back three months later.

In 1953 the (by now former) inhabitants of Kafr Bir'im pleaded to the Supreme Court of Israel to allow them to return to their village. Early in September 1953 the Supreme Court decided that the authorities had to answer to why the inhabitants were not allowed to return home. The result was devastating: on September 16, 1953 the Israeli air force and army in a joint operation bombed the village until it was completely destroyed. At the same time it was announced that 1,170 hectares of land belonging to the village had been expropriated by the state.

The leader of Melkite Greek Catholics in Israel, Archbishop Georgios Hakim, alerted the Vatican and other Church authorities about what had happened both at Kafr Bir'im and at another Christian Arab village called Ikrit. The Israeli government responded by attempting to settle the matter by paying compensations to the inhabitants. Few accepted. The little success they had was mainly due to archbishop Hakim, who had accepted compensation for the land belonging to the village church.

In the summer of 1972 the villagers from Kafr Bir'im and Ikrit went back to their villages to repair their churches, and then refused to leave. Their action was supported by archbishop Hakim's successor, Archbishop Joseph Raya. The police had to use force to remove them. The case was discussed in the Government, but they refused the villagers to return as they feared it would create a precedence. Early in August 1972 many Israeli Jews went to Kafr Bir'im and Ikrit to show solidarity with the villagers. Later, on August 13 1972, a couple of thousand people demonstrated together with Archbishop Raya and Elias Chacour in the streets of Jerusalem. (Haaretz 24 August 1972.)

The Israeli authorities claimed that most of the inhabitants of the village had received compensation for their losses. former residents countered that they were, at best, compensated for small portions of their holdings. In 1972 the government rescinded all "closed regions" laws in the country, but then reinstated these laws for the two villages Kafr Bir'im and Ikrit. This was met with criticism by the opposition parties. In the 1977 election campaign Menachem Begin, then leader of the right-wing Likud party, specifically promised the villagers that they could return home if he was elected. This promise became a great embarrassment to him after he had won, and a decision on the issue was postponed as long as possible. It was left to his agriculture minister to reveal to the public that a special cabinet committee had decided that the villagers of Kafr Bir'im and Ikrit would not be allowed to return. (Jerusalem Post, 18 January, 1979, ref. in Gilmour, p.103)

On March 24, 2000, Pope John Paul II asked Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak to do justice for the uprooted of Kafr Bir'im.[2]

[edit] Today

According to Walid Khalidi, the village today is: "The village has been demolished. The only standing structure is the church and its belltower. Crumbled walls, some scattered, partially-collapsed houses, and extensive rubble cover the hillside, all overgrown with bushes and wild grasses. Some of the archaeological remains are still visible. The village site has been closed off and the surrounding area declared an archaeological and tourist site."

[edit] References

Sabri Jiryis: The Arabs in Israel 1st American edition 1976 ISBN 0-85345-377-2 (updated from the 1966 ed.) With a foreword by Noam Chomsky. (First English edition; Beirut, Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968). Chapter 4.
Walid Khalidi (1992): "All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948." ISBN 0-88728-224-5.
Elias Chacour: "Blood Brothers. A Palestinian Struggles for Reconciliation in the Middle East" ISBN 0-8007-9321-8 with Hazard, David, and Baker III, James A., Secretary (Foreword by) 2nd Expanded ed. 2003. (Archbishop of Galilee, born in Kafr Bir'im, the book covers his childhood growing up in the town. (The first six chapters of Blood Brothers can be downloaded here (the Nov 08, 2005 link).
David Gilmour: Dispossessed. The Ordeal of the Palestinians. Sphere books, Great Britain, 1983, pp.102-103
Benny Morris: 1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians Oxford, 1994.
Benvenisti, Meron (2002): Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23422-7