About Us

IMRA
IMRA
IMRA

 

Subscribe

Search


...................................................................................................................................................


Saturday, August 5, 2006
Text: Danny Rubinstein describes Israeli locations Nasrallah claims for Lebanon in addition to Shaba Farms:

The seven lost villages
By Danny Rubinstein 4 August 2006
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746274.html

Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah and his followers occasionally
mention the fact that in 1948 the "Zionist entity" annexed several Lebanese
villages, expelled their residents, stole their property and destroyed their
homes. He is referring to seven villages that were part of Mandatory
Palestine, and whose inhabitants were Shiite Muslims. At the time they were
called Metawalis, a name almost certainly derived from the word wali, which
in Arabic means "to be loyal and holy"; the loyalty is to Caliph Ali and his
descendants, who are central to Shiite Islam.

Although Nasrallah's principal demands are Israeli withdrawal from the Shaba
Farms and the release of Lebanese prisoners, it is clear that when
circumstances allow, he will demand the return of these villages to Lebanon
and the return of the refugees to their lands.

Between 1916 and 1923, struggles, mainly diplomatic, took place over setting
the northern border of Mandatory Eretz Israel, which is the present border
line. The main players in the dispute were France, which had received the
mandate over Syria and Lebanon, and Britain, which had received the mandate
over Palestine-Eretz Israel. Other political groups also were involved, such
as the Zionist Histadrut and representatives of the Arab National Movement,
which was then just starting out.

When the border was finally drawn, there were several Shiite villages on the
Eretz Israel side. According to the population registries of the end of the
British Mandate period, a small community of about 4,000 Metawali Shiites
remained in Eretz Israel. Some researchers believe this group originated in
Persia, and that they arrived in South Lebanon in the seventh century, at
the initiative of the Caliph Muawiya. There is no proof of that.

The northernmost of the Shiite villages is Ibel al-Qamah, which was located
about two kilometers south of Metula. Until it was destroyed in 1948, this
little village stood on the ancient tel of the biblical city of Avel
Beit-Maakha, which is mentioned in the book of II Samuel. Metula-born
archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov remembers that there were few families in the
village, half of them Christian and half Shiite. He says there was a small
church in the village, whose bell served after 1948 to summon the members of
Kibbutz Kfar Giladi to their dining room.

At the time there were rumors that the Shiite mukhtar of Ibel al-Qamah, Abu
Sheikh, had a lover with whom he met secretly in Metula. According to
Ben-Dov, in 1948 Abu Sheikh went on a pilgrimage to the sacred burial site
Nebi Yusha (today the Yesha Fortress, west of the Hula Valley). On the
winding road ascending to the grave the bus was attacked by a unit of the
Palmach (the pre-State Jewish commando force) and Abu Sheikh was killed.
Despite that, Ben-Dov testifies to the exceptionally good relations that
prevailed for many years between the residents of Metula and their
neighbors, the Metawali farmers.

Nebi Yusha was one of the important gravesites of holy men visited by the
Metawalis living in the hills of south Lebanon, hills that were then called
Jebel Amal. Magen Broshi, former head of the Shrine of the Book at the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem, was a Palmach man, and a member of Kibbutz
Maayan Baruch in 1947-48. A fluent speaker of Arabic, he hiked in the
surrounding villages and once participated in the regular hilula (pilgrimage
celebration) at Nebi Yusha.

According to Broshi, surrounding the grave were several houses of the
Metawalis who were in charge of the compound, and members of the small
Bedouin tribe who hosted and protected him lived nearby. Broshi particularly
remembers how strictly the Metawalis observed the laws of purity. They
avoided eating with anyone who was not a Shiite, and this custom distanced
them from the Sunni majority in the region.

In any case, Broshi says he often visited the largest Shiite village in
Eretz Israel - Hunin. The village was located on the spot where Moshav
Margaliot stands today, on a hill west of Kiryat Shmona. Some of Hunin's
houses were built with the stones of the large Crusader fortress called
Chateau Neuf (in Arabic, Qal'at Hunin), whose central section is still
standing. Mustafa Dabar, an Arab from Jaffa who was exiled in the 1948 war,
wrote in his encyclopedia, "Our Land of Palestine," that on the eve of the
war, almost 2,000 people lived in Hunin.

Three additional Shiite-Metawali villages were located within the boundaries
of the British Mandate. The first, Qadas, was small, and stood adjacent to
Nebi Yusha, near the tel of the bibilical city of Kedesh Naftali. To the
south stood the village of Malkiya, adjacent to the kibbutz of the same
name, where the only battle against the Lebanese Army was waged during the
War of Independence.

During that same battle, Rehavam Zeevi commanded a Palmach unit while the
unit of the Lebanese army was commanded by Hazim Khaladi, a scion of a
famous Palestinian family from Jerusalem. Khaladi was a professional
soldier, who fought in the ranks of the British army during World War II and
afterward served as the commander of an officers' training school in
Damascus. Later he returned to his home in East Jerusalem and served as the
director of the Jordanian tourist bureau in the city. After the Six-Day War,
Zeevi, who was then the head of the IDF Central Command, met him, and they
went together to Malkiya and recalled the 1948 battle.

Southeast of Malkiya, on the northern highway near present-day Moshav
Avivim, stood the village of Salha. The village was known for its Taggart
fort, which was built by the British in 1938 as a garrison fort at the
height of the Arab rebellion, as part of the plan for building the "northern
fence" to separate Eretz Israel from Lebanon. The fortress - like those in
Nebi Yusha and in other locations in the Galilee - was named after British
police officer and engineer Sir Charles Taggart, who initiated their
construction after have acquired experience in suppressing insurgencies in
India. The residents of the Shiite villages in Eretz Israel, which were part
of the Safed district, fled in May of 1948, with the capture of the Arab
part of the city of Safed by Palmach forces. The refugees crossed the border
to the nearby Metawali villages in south Lebanon. Broshi recalls that at
least in one instance he and his friends distributed leaflets in the
villages of the Upper Galilee, asking the residents not to leave.

In the late 1970s, when the Israeli government opened the Good Fence, and
many of the villagers of South Lebanon began to work in Israel,
archaeologist Ben-Dov visited Nebi Yusha and was surprised to discover the
holy site had been cleaned and renovated somewhat. It was obvious to him
that some of the Metawali workers were coming to prostrate themselves on the
grave of the holy man.

When Nasrallah and Hezbollah talk about the Shiite villages under Israel's
jurisdiction, they mention two additional ones, which were located in the
Western Galilee: Tarbikha, which is now the site of Moshav Shomera, and the
town of Al-Bassa - now Betzet - whose residents were Metawalis and
Christians.

The comprehensive book "The Arabs of Eretz Israel" written in 1947 by Yaakov
Shimoni (in Hebrew), also tells of Shiites from South Lebanon who came
during the British Mandate years to work as laborers in Haifa. They even had
a small clubhouse in the lower city. As far as we know, none of them
remained in Israel.

Search For An Article

....................................................................................................

Contact Us

POB 982 Kfar Sava
Tel 972-9-7604719
Fax 972-3-7255730
email:imra@netvision.net.il IMRA is now also on Twitter
http://twitter.com/IMRA_UPDATES

image004.jpg (8687 bytes)