Palestinians who could die but not live in their village

By Djallal Malti

Israeli forces expelled Iqrit residents from their village during the first Israeli-Arab war but never allowed them to return to their ancestral home - except to be buried

UNLIKE other Palestinian refugees, the residents of the Arab village of Iqrit know for certain that Israel will one day allow them to return to their ancestral home. When they are dead.

The several hundred people living in the hilltop village near the Lebanon border were ordered out of their homes in October 1948 amid ongoing fighting of the first Israeli-Arab war, in what the army said was a temporary measure. "They told us we could come back in two weeks," says Maruf Ashqar, 79, who was 19 years old at the time. The Christian residents of Iqrit had no reason to doubt the promise - when Israeli troops showed up just days before, they welcomed them.

"It was a Sunday morning, at 7:30 am" when the soldiers first arrived on October 31, Ashqar says, speaking outside the church at the centre of the deserted hilltop village. "We hoisted a white flag and welcomed them with food," he recalls. The Greek Catholic villagers welcomed the troops "as 'liberators' with bread and salt," writes Israeli historian Benny Morris in his 2004 edition of his reference work, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.

So the residents, helped by the soldiers, moved to the village of Rama, some 20 kilometres away to the south inside Israel. The two weeks turned into months, but still the residents were not allowed to return while the government of the nascent state divided up Iqrit's land - along with the Maronite Christian village of Biram nearby that faced a similar fate - among Jewish kibbutzim or collective farms in the area. The village residents appealed to the High Court of Israel, in which they were now citizens, and in July 1951 the justices ruled in favour of their return to their homes. "But the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) continued to obstruct a return," Morris wrote. "On December 24, 1951 - Christmas Eve - the IDF razed what remained of Iqrit."

"They didn't leave anything except a church and cemetery," says Ashqar. "It's as if they were saying, 'come back when you're dead.'" In fact, the state still allows residents to bury their dead in the deserted village. Until the Israelis arrived, Iqrit had been inhabited at least since the time of the Crusades.

Today, weeds, bushes and trees cover the ruins of the village's houses and roads, blended them into Galilee's serene, green landscape. The church and cemetery are the only mute reminders of Iqrit's once-active life. The villagers have continued their fight since, but to no avail. According to Morris, the army and the state sought in 1948 to create a security zone along the northern border clear of potentially-hostile Arab population.

Successive governments feared that allowing the Iqrit villagers to return would set a dangerous precedent both for other internally displaced Israeli Arabs and for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced out during the 1948 war. The latter today number some 4.6 million souls scattered throughout the Middle East and the prospect of them returning is a daunting one for Israel, where the Jewish population stands at 5.6 million.

"The precedent of returning the displaced persons to their villages would be used for propaganda and political purposes by the Palestinian Authority," the then prime minister Ariel Sharon said in an affidavit in 2001 before the High Court that deliberated the latest appeal on the issue.

Things seemed to look up for the villagers and their offspring amid the Oslo Israeli-Palestinian peace process in 1993, when a committee appointed by the Israeli government recommended allowing the villagers to return, but at the same time setting a string of conditions they eventually rejected. The High Court turned down the villagers' latest appeal to return in July 2003, but said that when the political situation allows, the government should consider a solution that would enable their return. The decades of setbacks have not weakened the resolve of Iqrit residents - today some 1,200 people scattered throughout various villages in Israel's north - to return to the hilltop where their families have lived for centuries. They made their case to Pope John Paul II during his historic visit in 2000, then again to his successor Benedict XVI this May.

Using their own money, they paved a route which was destroyed by the Israeli authorities last year that leads up to the church. "We rebuilt it the same day, to show them that we won't rest with our arms crossed," says Imad Yaqub, 59, who has never lived in the place he considers home. "Despite the destruction of our village, we have remained faithful to it," he says. "We organise one mass per month, we celebrate marriages and baptisms in the church and we bury our dead in the cemetery." "Each summer we organise camps for the youth, during which they get to know the village and its history, so that they love Iqrit." "The government is counting that with time, memories will fade and the new generations forget from where they come," he says. "But we will prove otherwise." afp