An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba

by Doctor Nahla Abdo

  In an interview with Ilan Pappe, he had the following to say about Plan Dalet:

  The Jewish leadership, actually the High Command of the Jewish society, the Matkal, later it was called the High Command of the Army, met in Tel-Aviv and decided on the means of implementing Plan Dalet: It divided the future state of Israel into twelve zones and created twelve brigades; each brigade was supposed to cleanse all the area from the Palestinian villages and towns in it. And the plan was very clear on how to do it:

  You encircle the village or neighborhood … occupy it; separate the men ‒ defined as anyone above the age of ten ‒ from the women and the children; expel the women and the children, and take the men you think have a military potential, and send them to the POW camps; and you execute those you suspect were involved in actions against the Jews. This was a standard operational command.

  Commands to the Israeli soldiers were clear and demonstrated the intention to “cleanse” the Palestinian areas. This intent was also clear in the following document obtained from the IDF archives, which states: “Do whatever is in your power to cleanse the captured areas, quickly and immediately, of hostile elements, in accordance with the orders that were issued ... Facilitate the movement of the residents.”3

  THE VILLAGE OF EILABOUN

  The village of Eilaboun is a Palestinian village in the Galilee; it was composed of two parts assembled around two churches, a Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic one.

  According to United Nations Truce Observers,4 the village population was 750 Christian Arabs, 600 belonged to the Greek Catholic Church and 150 to the Orthodox Church. The village functioned as an agricultural centre, growing wheat, barley, lentils and olives. Before the Jews attacked the village, it had 400 sheep and goats; 200 cows; five horses; fifty donkeys and 1,000 fowl.5

  WHEN THE WAR REACHED EILABOUN

  In the summer of 1948 Nazareth and the surrounding villages fell into the hands of the Israeli army, and refugees from the area started passing through Eilaboun to Lebanon. After the fall of Tur’an, Bu’eine and Kafr Kanna, Eilaboun became the first defence line of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA).

  An air raid and shelling in July and August forced the people of Eilaboun to go and live in the caves near the village. The men continued working the land, as it was harvest time. The Israeli soldiers would shoot at them two or three times a week, to prevent them from working on their land. In the middle of September, the people who had become fed up with living in the caves returned to their homes, despite the danger.6

  Various people observed that a second wave of refugees passed through Eilaboun, carrying with them stories of killings and massacres that scared many young men, leading some young villagers to leave the village and seek refuge in Lebanon.7 Most interviewees attested that, “the elders of Eilaboun gathered in the parsonage of priest Morkus, and discussed what to do, and made a decision to stay in Eilaboun, because some of the villagers that lived around Eilaboun were not harmed and were allowed to stay, and they assumed the same will happen to them”.8

  THE FALL OF EILABOUN

  “On Friday, 29 October, the Jewish forces at Galilee, in an action generally directed northwards, attacked in particular along the axis: Lubiya, Eilaboun, and Maghar.”9

  The UNTSO reported that “on the eve of 29 October, the shelling intensified, and it was a very frightening experience. The people rushed to hide in the two churches of the village, they were very scared, some left with their sleeping clothes and some did not even wear their shoes”. The Arab Liberation Army withdrew from its posts south of Eilaboun without informing the villagers; the volunteers from Eilaboun were forbidden to inform their fellow villagers and families and were threatened with execution if they did, so the people of Eilaboun were left without any protection. The quietness of the posts made the villagers suspicious, so some young men tried to see what was happening and realized that the ALA had withdrawn, and that they were left without any protection, unarmed and unprotected. Some of the young men feared for their lives and ran towards Lebanon, but many others stayed in the churches with their families.

  According to several interviewees, “The Elders of Eilaboun prepared to surrender to the invading Israelis, so they raised a white flag on the Catholic Church and a yellow one on the Orthodox Church”.10

  As the UNTSO reports: “In the morning of Saturday, 30 October, between 0500 and 0600 hrs (local time) the Jewish troops entered the village, and the inhabitants (Christian Arabs) immediately surrendered”.11

  The village’s four priests surrendered the village, holding a white flag, but the army commander pushed them and ordered them to call everybody to “El Hara”, the village square. The village square is adjacent to the parsonage and the Catholic Church, so the people in the Catholic Church started coming out to the square, when suddenly the Israeli soldiers started shooting at them, killing a man from Horan called Azar, who used to work for one of the village families, and wounding two boys, Yousef Slayeh and Butros Matta. The people in the Orthodox Church were called out as well, coming into the square with their hands above their heads. The soldiers separated the men from the women into two groups in the square. What is interesting is that none of the interviewed could remember how long they stayed in the square, but all of them said it was a terrifying period of time; they could not say if it was minutes or hours.12

  The following testimony, told by Salem Zreiq, expressed the feelings many other interviewees shared:

  We walked until we reached the Hara, which is the main town square. The first thing we saw in the square, a man named ‘Azar from Horan, who used to work for Salim Zreiq, was killed in the middle of the square. The bullet had struck him in the head. Until this moment, I ... I see him in my mind. We entered [the square]. “Sit down!” we were told. We sat down. Of course, I cannot say how long ‒ an hour ... two hours. We were tyrannized by fear. We did not feel the difference between an hour, half-an-hour, or a quarter of an hour.13

  Similar stories were told by many interviewees, as the following narrative shows:

  The Israeli officer chose seventeen men, and ordered the rest of the villagers to march north to the village Maghar (about 7km away from Eilaboun) to be used as a human shield for the advancing forces, in case there were land mines on the road. After the force arrives to Maghar the villagers were supposed to be allowed to return to their village, as they were told. Samira Zreiq, the wife of Badee, one of the chosen men, begged the soldiers to pick up her eighteen-year-old son that was left with his very old great-grandmother, but the soldiers did not let her, and the boy was left in the village with his great-grandmother, and the villagers, instead of returning their village started their march to the unknown. The priests, on the other hand were ordered to go to their homes.14

  THE MASSACRE

  Butros Matta could not walk because of his wounds, so he stayed sitting a few metres away from the chosen seventeen men and the soldiers, making him the only witness to what happened in the square.

  According to Butros and others: “The Israeli officer chose five of the men, and ordered them to drive a Jeep in front of the military convoy as a human shield; the rest stayed in the square”.15 He continued:

  The remaining men in the square sat waiting, hands on their heads, while the Israeli soldiers huddled in discussion. An officer stepped forward, “We need three men”, he shouted. Three men stood up and were marched off with the soldiers. Moments later, three shots were heard. The soldiers returned, “Three more men”, and three more shots. And so on, until only three men remained in the square. The last three were shot with an automatic rifle in the square.16

  The fourteen martyrs of Eilaboun were:

  1.Aazar Msalam, who came from Horan to work in Eilaboun.

  2.Badee Zreiq (twenty-four years old), survived by his wife, two daughters and son.

  3.Fadel Eilabuni (twenty-two years old), single.

  4.Melad Sleman (twenty-one years old), single.

  5.Zake Eskafe (twenty-six years old),
single.

  6.Abdala Shofane (sixteen years old), single.

  7.Michael Shame, who took refuge in Eilaboun from Haifa. He was survived by his wife and two sons.

  8.Raja Nakhle (thirty-seven years old), single.

  9.Muhammad Asa’ad, who took refuge in Eilaboun from Hittin, single.

  10.Hanna Ashqar (forty years old), survived by his pregnant wife and eight sons.

  11.Naa’im Zreiq (thirty-nine years old), survived by his pregnant wife and five sons.

  12.Jeryes Hayek (twenty-four years old), survived by his wife and daughter.

  13.Foad Zreiq (twenty-five years old), survived by his wife and daughter.

  14.Sema’an Shofane, his son was one of the martyrs too (see above Abdalla Shofany17).

  The UNTSO report corroborated the killing of thirteen men: “Thirteen men were killed; five bodies in a mausoleum grave were viewed by Captain Zeuty and Major Compoeasso, and had undoubtedly been shot. … Homes viewed showed evidence of having been plundered; pious images were broken and destroyed” (UNTSO Report).18[[10.3]]

  Information from all the residents of Eilaboun who were interviewed confirmed that the village was looted and left almost empty. Beside the priests, a few children and very old people who could not go to the churches, there was no one left in the village. The remaining villagers woke up to the aftermath to find their loved ones killed in four locations, and had to bury them in a temporary mausoleum.

  THE THREE-DAY MARCH TO LEBANON

  The residents of Eilaboun started walking in front of the armoured vehicles towards Maghar. When they were about 2km away from Eilaboun, the soldiers shot at them, wounding the boy Tawfiq Ashqar. When they reached Maghar, the soldiers did not allow them to drink, eat or go back to Eilaboun, but forced them to walk farther to the north. When they left Maghar, an old man screamed “People, Eilaboun died!”, and the women started to cry.

  According to Salem Zreiq,

  The people got tired, and wanted to rest, we sat to take a rest, the minute we sat, they [Israeli soldiers] started shooting at us from a military point that was built by the British in the World War II in case Germany reached there. They started to shoot at us from it, and wounded Tawfiq Hanna Ibrahim, they hit him in the arm.19

  In the afternoon, the soldiers ordered them to stop for a rest. When they arrived near the village of Kafr ‘Inan (about 12km away from Eilaboun), they sat down under a big oak tree.

  Kafr ‘Inan (population, 418 people) was a Palestinian village that was cleansed and destroyed by the Israelis on 30 October 1948.20 In my interview with Mr Shqeer, a former resident of Kafr ‘Inan, he told me a moving story: “The Israeli soldiers shot my brother Suleiman Shqeer, and wanted to shoot me as well, when my mother jumped and hugged me and told the soldier, ‘you took one, leave him to me, and they let me be’”. The Israeli soldiers took another seven men and executed them near the village.

  The eight martyrs of Kafr ‘Inan were: four from the same Shqeer family (Suleiman, Hassan, Fawaz and Gamil), Eisa Kayed, Suad Asa’ad, Abdel Qader Saffouri and Mehyel-Deen Taha.21

  The people of Eilaboun did not have anything to eat or drink the whole day, so they asked the soldiers for some food. The soldiers gave them some food, but they barely started to eat when a military vehicle came and started shooting at them, thinking they were attacking the soldiers. Sema’an Shofany was killed and some others were wounded. They ran for their lives, together with the people of Kafr ‘Inan, up the mountain towards the village of al-Farradiyya. The village of al-Farradiyya (population 777) was also cleansed and destroyed by the Israelis on 31 October 1948.22

  According to the UNTSO report,

  Shortly before sunset, the people of Eilaboun and Kafr ‘Inan reached Farradiyya tired, hungry and thirsty. The children slept without having any food. The soldiers gathered the people of Eilaboun and of Kafr ‘Inan in a square near the mosque of Farradiyya. In the evening the Israeli soldiers threatened the people of Eilaboun that if they did not pay 100 Palestinian pounds [a lot of money back then], the Israeli soldiers would kill some of the young men of Eilaboun, so the people gathered the money, most of it from one man called Ibrahin Hanna, and paid the soldiers, but the soldiers were not satisfied, they searched the people one-by-one, took their jewellery, whatever money they had, and anything else of value they could find. The villagers stayed the night at the mosque, it was cold and they did not have anything to cover their bodies with.

  The soldiers executed men from al-Farradiyya; the number was not known but the people of Eilaboun said they killed a lot of men.23

  While we were in the square, they told us “people of Farradiyya surrendered”. They gathered the young men that gave up their weapons, there is no resistance and no fear, in God’s will we will go home. Shooting started, we asked what is wrong, and they said “They killed young men from Farradiyya”. They shot young men from Farradiyya after they surrendered and dropped their weapons and the Mukhtar called them from the mountains … they killed them. (Salem Zreiq)

  “Oh God, how many people they killed in Farradiyya.”24

  According to the UNTSO report:

  In the morning the soldiers marched the people of Eilaboun, Kafr ‘Inan and Farradiyya to the village square. On the way to the square one soldier spoke with Fadil Eilabuni, a man from Eilaboun, as if he knew him, and then shot him and pushed him down the edge of the road, about 2 metres high. Fadil Eilabuni miraculously survived and went to Lebanon where he spent the rest of his life.

  The report adds:

  In the square they separated the men from the women, and took the men to the camp as prisoners of war (POW), and forced the women, children and the old to walk towards the north, a march through the very steep upper Galilee mountains. The soldier shot at them again, and wounded some of them, and they ran scared. Two women left their babies, being exhausted and without food for two days, they could not carry them anymore, one of the babies was retrieved by an old man, the other just disappeared and could never be found.25

  Here are the voices of some of the Eilabuni villagers:

  “When we climbed this mountain, who can climb mount Eljarmaq (Mirun)? The people reached the top almost dead.” (Anise Zreiq)

  “It is good that we are still sane. The agony! Carrying two children and running through Faradiya’s slopes, while they were shooting at us.” (Milya Zreiq)

  “The march was not easy from Eilaboun to Lebanon through the mountains. We were running while they were shooting at us. We did not walk slowly.” (Anise Zreiq)

  In the late afternoon the people of Eilaboun reached the village of Mirun (about 24km away from Eilaboun), and rested in the olive grove near it.

  Mirun (also spelled Mairun, had a population of 336 people) was a Palestinian village that was cleansed and destroyed by the Israelis at the end of October 1948.26

  The UN Truce Supervision Observers (UNTSO) Reports:

  On October 31 1948, Captain Zeuty, Safad observer, met near Meiroun (1918-2651) women and children who had been expelled from Eilaboun. These poor people told that they had been pushed out of their Village and pushed towards a frontier. No men were left with them: Some had been shot and others kidnapped.27

  As most of those interviewed attested, the people of Eilaboun were very hungry, they asked the soldiers to be allowed into the abandoned Mirun to look for something to eat. After an hour they came back with some flour and some dried figs. The women prepared some bread to feed the children. During the night it was very cold and they slept in the open without any cover. At midnight the soldiers loaded the people onto trucks and drove them to the Lebanese border. The trucks were crowded, and the ride was rough because of the winding mountain roads. It was so dark that mothers were separated from their children. The atmosphere was of fear and uncertainty: there was the sound of mothers calling for their children, and children crying for their mothers. It was still dark when the soldiers dropped them near the border, and ordered them to walk a narrow and rough gorge, by sunset they noti
ced that the soldiers were nowhere near them, and they understood they were no longer on Palestinian soil.

  They reached a pond near the Lebanese village Rmaych; they were very thirsty, everybody jumped into the pond to drink. In Rmaych men who had fled Eilaboun before its fall informed the villagers that the twelve men chosen by the soldiers in Eilaboun had been executed.They did not stop in Rmaych but continued to Ain Ebel, about 6km away, and there they stayed in the church of Ain Ebel. They stayed in Ain Ebel for three days, and during that time the children had to beg for money and food because of their hunger ‒ a scar carried by many until this day.

  Most of the people of Eilaboun were taken to the refugee camp Miyah w Miyah near Sidon, but some who had family members already in Lebanon had a better luck, and went to live with them in slightly better conditions.

  IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING REFUGEES

  The people of Eilaboun were scattered across Lebanon from Miyah w Miyah in the south of Lebanon to Batroun in the north of Lebanon.

  In the refugee camp Miyah w Miyah, several interviewees attested that “each two families took a tent; they did not have any mattresses or blankets. It was a harsh situation, they had no food, they had nothing”. The food was distributed twice a day; each family sent one person to collect it.

  In the Batroun, the Zreiq clan (more than fifty people) had to live in one house with five rooms, they did not have anything, no money, and they did not have enough food. My father Salem Zreiq had the following to say:

  We wanted to survive in Batroun, we could not wait for the aid to come, we started to steal, and we went to the farms we stole tomatoes, eggplants, etc. The owner came and told us we are steeling, we said “We are not thieves, we are people that own land and are respected, but we want to survive, we don’t want to die of hunger”.28