Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:48, 10 November 2014

Template:Infobox former Arab villages in Palestine Kafr Bir'im, also Kefr Berem (Template:Lang-ar, Template:Lang-he-n), was a Palestinian Arab village in Mandatory Palestine, located in modern-day northern Israel, 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) south of the Lebanese border and 11.5 kilometers (7.1 mi) northwest of Safed. The village was situated 750 meters (2,460 ft) above sea level, with a church overlooking it at an elevation of 752 meters (2,467 ft). The church was built on the ruins of an older church destroyed in the earthquake of 1837. In 1945, 710 people lived in Kafr Bir'im, most of them Christians. By 1992, the only standing structure was the church and belltower.

History

Antiquity

Kafr Bir'im is built on the site of the ancient Jewish village of Kfar Bar'am, from which the name is derived. The remains of the a 3rd-century Synagogue of Kfar Bar'am are still visible.

Middle Ages

A visitor in the thirteenth century described an Arab village containing the remains of two ancient synagogues.

Ottoman period

In 1596, Kafr Bir'im appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Jira of the Liwa of Safad. It had a population of 114 Muslim households and 22 bachelors.

Kafr Bir'im was badly damaged in the Galilee earthquake of 1837. The local church and a row of columns from the ancient synagogue collapsed. In the 19th century the village had a population of 160 males, all Maronites and Melkites. During the 1860 civil war in Lebanon, Muslims and Druzes attacked the Christian village. In the late nineteenth century the village was described as being built of stone, surrounded by gardens, olive trees and vineyards, with a population of between 300 and 500.

British rule

In 1945, Kafr Bir'im had a population of 710, consisting of 10 Muslims and 700 Christians, with 12,250 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. The village population in 1948 was estimated as 1,050 inhabitants.

Israeli rule

Kafr Bir'im was captured by the Haganah on October 31, 1948 during Operation Hiram. In November 1948 most of the inhabitants were expelled until the military operation was complete, and none were subsequently permitted to return. Today the villagers and their descendants number about 2,000 people in Israel. In addition, there are villagers and descendants in Lebanon and in western countries.

In 1949, with cross-border infiltration a frequent occurrence, Israel did not allow the villagers to return to Bir'im on the grounds that Jewish settlement at the place would deter infiltration. Kibbutz Bar'am was established by demobilized soldiers on the lands of the village.

In 1953, the residents of former Kafr Bir'im appealed to the Supreme Court of Israel to return to their village. The court ruled that the authorities must answer to why they were not allowed to return. On September 16, 1953 the village was razed and 1,170 hectares of land were expropriated by the state.

The leader of Melkite Greek Catholics in Israel, Archbishop Georgios Hakim, alerted the Vatican and other church authorities, and the Israeli government offered the villagers compensation. Archbishop Hakim accepted compensation for the land belonging to the village church.

In the summer of 1972, the villagers of Kafr Bir'im and Iqrit went back to repair their churches and refused to leave. Their action was supported by archbishop Hakim's successor, Archbishop Joseph Raya. The police removed them by force. The government barred the return of the villagers so as not to create a precedent. In August 1972, a large group of Israeli Jews went to Kafr Bir'im and Iqrit to show solidarity with the villagers. Several thousand turned out for a demonstration in Jerusalem. The Israeli authorities said most of the inhabitants of the village had received compensation for their losses, but the villagers said they had only been 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 Iqrit.

This was met with criticism by the opposition parties. In the 1977 election campaign Menachem Begin, then leader of the right-wing Likud party, 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 Iqrit would not be allowed to return.

The operational name of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972 was named after this village and Iqrit.

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

See also

• Correcting a Mistake: Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, 1936-1956
• Present absentee
• List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestinian exodus

References

1. The Hebrew and Aramaic lexicon of the Old Testament, By Ludwig Köhler, Walter Baumgartner, Johann Jakob Stamm, Mervyn Edwin John Richardson, Benedikt Hartmann, Brill, 1999, p. 1646
2. Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world: toward a new Jewish archaeology, Steven Fine, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 13-14
3. Judaism in late antiquity, Jacob Neusner, Bertold Spuler, Hady R Idris, BRILL, 2001, p. 155
4. Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 175
5. 1837 earthquake in southern Lebanon and northern Israel N. N. Ambraseys, in Annali di Geofisica, Aug. 1997, p. 933
6. Robinson and Smith, 1856, pp. 68-71
7. Maḥmūd Yazbak. Haifa in the late Ottoman period, 1864-1914, Brill, 1998. pg. 204. ISBN 90-04-11051-8.
8. Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 198. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 460
9. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 70
10. Justice for Ikrit and Biram, Haaretz October 10, 2001
11. Birem.org
12. Morris, 1997, p. 124
13. Sabri Jiryis: "Kouetz 307 (27. Aug. 1953): 1419"
14. Sabri Jiryis: Israel Government Yearbook 5725 (1964):32
15. Sabri Jiryis: Haaretz 24 July 1972, Yedioth Aharonoth, 30 June 1972
16. Sabri Jiryis and Chacours autobiography
17. Sabri Jiryis: compensation for only 91.6 out of 1,565.0 acres (6.333 km) had been given in Ikrit, in Kafr Bir'im only "negligible" amounts
18. Jerusalem Post, 18 January 1979, ref. in Gilmour, p.103
19. Morris & Black, 1991, p. 270

Bibliography

• Barron, J. B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922. Government of Palestine.
• {{cite book |title=Sacred landscape: the buried history of the Holy Land since 1948 |first=Mêrôn|last= Benveniśtî |authorlink=Meron Benvenisti |year=2000 |publisher=University of California Press |url=http://books.google.com/?id=7itq6zYtSJwC |isbn=978-0-520-23422-2}
• Conder, Claude Reignier; Kitchener, Herbert H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. Vol. 1. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• Chacour, Elias: "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.
• Dalrymple, William (1997): From the Holy Mountain, Harper Collins, ISBN 0-00-255509-3 p. 268-9, 271, 276-5, 363, 365-72. Dalrymple interviewed Sarah Daou from Kafr Bir'im and goes there to find her relatives.
• Gilmour, David : Dispossessed. The Ordeal of the Palestinians. Sphere books, Great Britain, 1983, pp. 102–103
• Hadawi, Sami (1970). Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center.
• Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. ISBN 3-920405-41-2.
• Jiryis, Sabri: 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.
• Khalidi, Walid (1992): "All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948." ISBN 0-88728-224-5.
• Mills, E., ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas (PDF). Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
• Morris, B. and Black, Ian (1991): Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services (Grove Press, 1991) ISBN 0-8021-1159-9
• Morris, Benny (1994). 1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians. Oxford University Press.
• Morris, Benny (1997). Israel's Border Wars, 1949 – 1956. Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press.
• Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00967-7.
• Palmer, E. H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• Robinson, Edward; Smith, Eli (1856). Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and adjacent regions: A Journal of Travels in the year 1852. London: John Murray.
• Rohde, Harold (1979). Administration and Population of the Sancak of Safed in the Sixteenth Century. Columbia University.

External links

• Kufr Birim, from Electronic Intifada
• Welcome To Kafr Bir'im
• SWP map 4, IAA
• SWP map 4, Wikimedia commons
• Kafr Bir'im, from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
• Kufr Bir3em, from Dr. Moslih Kanaaneh
• Kafr Bir’im, Dr. Khalil Rizk.
• A visit to Bir’im with the Bir'im children's summer camp by Miki Levi (31/7/2004), from Zochrot
• The right of return, colored in pink by Ronit Sela, Bir'im (6/8/2005) from Zochrot
• Visit to Birem Summer Camp by Eitan Bronstein, (9.8.2007) from Zochrot

v t e Palestinian Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestinian exodus by subdistrict
Acre	Amqa Arab al-Samniyya al-Bassa al-Birwa al-Damun Dayr al-Qassi al-Ghabisiyya Iqrit Iribbin Jiddin al-Kabri Kafr 'Inan Kuwaykat al-Manshiyya al-Mansura Mi'ar al-Nabi Rubin al-Nahr al-Ruways Suhmata al-Sumayriyya Suruh al-Tall Tarbikha Umm al-Faraj az-Zeeb
Beisan	Arab al-'Arida Arab al-Bawati Arab al-Safa al-Ashrafiyya al-Bira Beisan Danna Farwana al-Fatur al-Ghazzawiyya al-Hamidiyya al-Hamra Jabbul Kafra Kawkab al-Hawa al-Khunayzir Masil al-Jizl al-Murassas Qumya al-Sakhina al-Samiriyya Sirin Tall al-Shawk al-Taqa al-Tira Umm 'Ajra Umm Sabuna Yubla Zab'a al-Zawiya
Beersheba	al-Imara al-Jammama al-Khalasa Auja al-Hafir
Gaza	Arab Suqrir Barbara Barqa al-Batani al-Gharbi al-Batani al-Sharqi Bayt 'Affa Bayt Daras Bayt Jirja Bayt Tima Bil'in Burayr Dayr Sunayd Dimra al-Faluja Hamama Hatta Hiribya Huj Hulayqat Ibdis Iraq al-Manshiyya Iraq Suwaydan Isdud al-Jaladiyya al-Jiyya Julis al-Jura Jusayr Karatiyya Kawfakha Kawkaba al-Khisas al-Masmiyya al-Kabira al-Masmiyya al-Saghira al-Muharraqa Najd Ni'ilya Qastina al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya Simsim Summil Tall al-Turmus Yasur
Haifa	Abu Shusha Abu Zurayq Arab al-Fuqara Arab al-Nufay'at Arab Zahrat al-Dumayri 'Atlit Ayn Ghazal Ayn Hawd Balad al-Sheikh Barrat Qisarya Burayka al-Burj al-Butaymat Daliyat al-Rawha' al-Dumun al-Ghubayya al-Fawqa al-Ghubayya al-Tahta Hawsha Ijzim Jaba' al-Jalama Kabara al-Kafrayn Kafr Lam al-Kasayir Khubbayza Lid al-Manara al-Mansi al-Mansura al-Mazar Naghnaghiya Qannir Qira Qisarya Qumbaza al-Rihaniyya Sabbarin al-Sarafand al-Sarkas Sa'sa' al-Sawamir al-Shuna al-Sindiyana al-Tantura al-Tira Umm ash Shauf Umm az-Zinat Wa'arat al-Sarris Wadi Ara Yajur
Hebron	'Ajjur Barqusya Bayt Jibrin Bayt Nattif al-Dawayima Deir al-Dubban Dayr Nakhkhas Kudna Mughallis al-Qubayba Ra'na Tell es-Safi Umm Burj az-Zakariyya Zayta Zikrin
Jaffa	al-'Abbasiyya Abu Kabir Abu Kishk Bayt Dajan Biyar 'Adas Fajja al-Haram Ijlil al-Qibliyya Ijlil al-Shamaliyya al-Jammasin al-Gharbi al-Jammasin al-Sharqi Jarisha Kafr 'Ana al-Khayriyya al-Mas'udiyya al-Mirr al-Muwaylih Rantiya al-Safiriyya Salama Saqiya al-Sawalima al-Shaykh Muwannis Yazur
Jenin	al-Jawfa al-Mazar Ayn al-Mansi Lajjun Nuris Zir'in
Jerusalem	Allar Aqqur Artuf Bayt 'Itab Bayt Mahsir Bayt Naqquba Bayt Thul Bayt Umm al-Mays al-Burayj Dayr Aban Dayr 'Amr Dayr al-Hawa Dayr Rafat Dayr al-Shaykh Deir Yassin Ayn Karim Ishwa Islin Ism Allah Jarash al-Jura Kasla al-Lawz Lifta al-Maliha Nitaf al-Qabu Qalunya al-Qastal Ras Abu 'Ammar Sar'a Saris Sataf Sheikh Badr Suba Sufla al-Tannur al-'Umur al-Walaja
Nazareth	al-Mujaydil Indur Ma'alul Saffuriyya
Ramle	Abu al-Fadl Abu Shusha Ajanjul Aqir Barfiliya al-Barriyya Bashshit Bayt Far Bayt Jiz Bayt Nabala Bayt Shanna Bayt Susin Bir Ma'in Bir Salim al-Burj al-Buwayra Daniyal Dayr Abu Salama Dayr Ayyub Dayr Muhaysin Dayr Tarif al-Duhayriyya al-Haditha Idnibba Innaba Jilya Jimzu Kharruba al-Khayma Khulda al-Kunayyisa al-Latrun Lydda al-Maghar Majdal Yaba al-Mansura al-Mukhayzin al-Muzayri'a al-Na'ani al-Nabi Rubin Qatra Qazaza al-Qubab al-Qubayba Qula Ramla Sajad Salbit Sarafand al-Amar Sarafand al-Kharab Saydun Shahma Shilta al-Tina al-Tira Umm Kalkha Wadi Hunayn Yibna Zakariyya Zarnuqa
Safad	Abil al-Qamh al-'Abisiyya 'Akbara Alma Ammuqa Arab al-Shamalina Arab al-Zubayd Ayn al-Zaytun Baysamun Biriyya al-Butayha al-Buwayziyya Dallata al-Dawwara Dayshum al-Dirbashiyya al-Dirdara Fara al-Farradiyya Fir'im Ghabbatiyya Ghuraba al-Hamra' Harrawi Hunin al-Husayniyya Jahula al-Ja'una Jubb Yusuf Kafr Bir'im al-Khalisa Khan al-Duwayr Karraza al-Khisas Khiyam al-Walid Kirad al-Baqqara Kirad al-Ghannama Lazzaza Madahil Al-Malkiyya Mallaha al-Manshiyya al-Mansura Mansurat al-Khayt Marus Meiron al-Muftakhira Mughr al-Khayt al-Muntar al-Nabi Yusha' al-Na'ima Qabba'a Qadas Qaddita Qaytiyya al-Qudayriyya al-Ras al-Ahmar Sabalan Safsaf Saliha al-Salihiyya al-Sammu'i al-Sanbariyya Sa'sa' al-Shawka al-Tahta al-Shuna Taytaba Tulayl al-'Ulmaniyya al-'Urayfiyya al-Wayziyya Yarda, Safad al-Zahiriyya al-Tahta al-Zanghariyya Zawiya al-Zuq al-Fawqani al-Zuq al-Tahtani
Tiberias	Awlam al-Dalhamiyya Ghuwayr Abu Shusha Hadatha al-Hamma Hittin Kafr Sabt Lubya Ma'dhar al-Majdal al-Manara al-Manshiyya al-Mansura Nasir al-Din Nimrin al-Nuqayb Samakh al-Samakiyya al-Samra al-Shajara al-Tabigha al-'Ubaydiyya Wadi Hamam al-Wa'ra al-Sawda' Yaquq
Tulkarm	Bayt Lid Bayyarat Hannun Fardisya Ghabat Kafr Sur al-Jalama Kafr Saba al-Majdal al-Manshiyya Miska Qaqun Raml Zayta Tabsur Umm Khalid Wadi al-Hawarith Wadi Qabbani al-Zabadida Zalafa

• Articles with inconsistent citation formats
• District of Safad
• Arab villages depopulated after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
• Maronite communities