Iqrit

Iqrit ( or إقرث, ''Iqrith;'' sometimes romanized as ''Ikret'') was a Palestinian Christian village, located northeast of Acre, in the western Galilee.Hadawi, Sami. ''Bitter Harvest: Palestine between 1914-1979.'' Revised edition. New York: The Caravan Books, 1979, 149. In October 1948, the village's Palestinian Arab inhabitants were expelled by Zionist forces during the 1948 Palestine war, and the territory later became part of the new State of Israel. All of its Palestinian Christian inhabitants were forced to flee to Lebanon or the Israeli village of Rameh, and, despite the promise that they would be returned in two weeks' time, the villagers were not allowed to return, and the Israeli army destroyed the village.

In 1951, in response to a plea from the Iqrit villagers, the Israel Supreme Court had ruled that the former residents of Iqrit be allowed to return to their homes. However, before they could, the IDF, despite awareness of the Supreme Court decision, destroyed Iqrit on Christmas Day 1951. Descendants of the villagers maintain an outpost in the village church, and bury their dead in its cemetery. All attempts to cultivate its lands are uprooted by the Israel Lands Administration.

History

Antiquity: archaeological sites

The Canaanites erected a statue for the god Melqart of Tyre in the village. The village area contains mosaic floors, remains of a wine press, rock-hewn tombs, cisterns, and granite implements. There are many archaeological sites in Iqrit's vicinity.

Iqrit is identified with ''Yoqeret'' or ''Yokereth'' () a Jewish village mentioned in the Talmud, homeplace of Jose of Yokereth (Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit, 23b).

Crusader period

When the Crusaders occupied Iqrit, they called it Acref. Açref is a name still commonly used for the village among surrounding Bedouin tribes.

Ottoman period

Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Iqrit appeared in the 1596 tax registers as being in the ''nahiya'' (subdistrict) of Akka under the Liwa of Safad, with a population of 374 and an economy dependent largely on goats, beehives and agriculture. There was a press used for olives or grapes.

In 1875, Victor Guérin passed by the village and was told that it was "very considerable" and inhabited by Maronites and Greek Orthodox Christians.
In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's (PEF) ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) called it ''Akrith'', and described it as a village of stone buildings situated on a tell, with arable land including figs and olives, a modern chapel serving a Christian population of 100, and water supplied by three springs and a dozen rock-cut cisterns.Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p
148
Partially quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 15

British Mandate

Like a number of other villages in the area, Iqrit was linked to the coastal highway from Acre to Ras an-Naqura via a secondary road leading to Tarbikha. There were 339 people living in 50 houses in the census of 1931, which rose to 490 by the 1945 statistics, comprising 460 Christians and 30 Muslims. There was a total of of land according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 458 dunams were plantations and irrigable land; 1,088 were used for cereals, while 68 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
130
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At the time of their eviction in November 1948, there were 491 citizens in Iqrit, including 432 Melkites (Greek Catholics), inhabiting the entire area of the village. Some of the 59 Muslims of the village rented their homes in Iqrit while others had built houses in esh-Shafaya.

Only part of the village land was cultivated and the rest was covered with oak, laurel and carob trees. By 1948, the village owned about 600 dunams (600,000 m²) of private property with groves of fig trees that served all inhabitants of Iqrit and the surroundings. The groves covered the hill of al-Bayad, and the remaining cultivated land was used for crops of lentils, as well as tobacco and other fruit trees.

The village included a private elementary school administered by the Greek Catholic Archdiocese and a large Melkite (Greek Catholic) church, the latter of which remains standing. There were two natural water springs, and many wells and a large pool for collected rainwater. There were many threshing floors, mainly located between the built-up village lands and the cemetery.

1948 war

Iqrit was captured on 31 October 1948 by the Haganah's Oded Brigade during Operation Hiram, an Israeli offensive which advanced on the coastal road towards Lebanon.
Iqrit and Tarbikha surrendered and the villagers stayed in their homes.

Iqrit and a number of other villages in the region were soon affected by a policy known as "an Arabless border strip". Six days after its surrender, on 5 November 1948, the Israeli Army ordered the villagers to surrender the village and leave, stating that they would be returned in two weeks' time when the military operations had concluded. Residents departed, anticipating only temporary absence, as had been promised. Some went to Lebanon and the Israeli Army trucked the majority to Rame, a town between Acre and Safad.

According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the villagers of Iqrit were outright expelled by the Israeli Army in November 1948, together with the villagers of Kafr Bir'im, Nabi Rubin and Tarbikha, "without Cabinet knowledge, debate, or approval – though, almost inevitably, this received ''post facto '' Cabinet endorsement." While some of the former inhabitants of Iqrit became refugees in Lebanon, most are now internally displaced Palestinians who are also citizens of Israel.

Israel; struggle for return

1951 Supreme Court ruling

The first legal action against the state of Israel was brought in 1951 by 5 men of Iqrit. Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari, acting as their lawyer, was instrumental in gaining the right of return for the men. On 31 July 1951, the Israeli courts recognised the rights of the villagers to their land and their right to return to it. The court said the land was not abandoned and therefore could not be placed under the Custodian of Absentee Property.

In July 1951, the villagers of Iqrit pleaded their case before Israel's Supreme Court, and the court ruled in favour of the right to return to their village, "as long as no emergency decree" against it has been issued.Justice for Ikrit and Biram
Oct 11, 2001, Haaretz After this judgement, the military government immediately issued such a decree against the Ikrit evacuees. The villagers appealed to the Supreme Court again and were scheduled to have their case considered on 6 February 1952.

IDF razes Iqrit

Two months after the Israeli High Court had rules in favour of the Ikrit residents, on Christmas Day 1951, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed the village, including its residences and churches. According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

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