Pueblo Chieftain · Pueblo, Colorado · 5 October 1972

CP-1972-001

Berem Arabs Demanding To Return to Former Home

Marcus Eliason, Associated Press, Berem, Israel

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Transcribed from the clipping

“BEREM, Israel (AP) — Twenty-four years ago, with war raging in the Middle East, an Israeli army officer drove into this Arab village and ordered its 800 inhabitants to leave. He promised they could return ‘in a short time’ after the Israelis had cleared the nearby border with Lebanon of mines and enemy pockets. The Arabs claim the officer said 15 days.

But when the villagers tried to return to Berem they were blocked by Israeli troops. They appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which ordered their return home on the grounds no formal expulsion order had been issued. The army hurriedly wrote out the orders and dodged the court ruling. Then, in 1955, the Israel Defense Forces blew up every house in the village.

The Arabs were given alternative housing nearby and each subsequent request to return to Berem was rejected ‘on security grounds.’ It seemed like the end of the affair. Now Berem is back in the news, haunting Israelis at the highest level.

It Happens Again. Berem — along with the villagers of neighboring Iqrit who suffered the same fate — appears to be a replay of the murky, time worn controversy over what really happened in 1948: were the Arabs expelled by the Israelis to make way for the Jewish state, or did the indigenous Arabs obey the orders of their leaders to evacuate for the invading Arab armies?

The Israelis have said the Arabs in 1948 abandoned their homes when they ran away from the fighting. The Arabs claimed they were ordered out by the Israelis who feared a large Arab population inside the burgeoning Jewish state. This argument will be at the center of any agreement reached on the return of the Arab refugees to Israel or on payment of indemnity.

The Israeli government says it has kept Berem empty because its proximity to the Lebanese border could provide shelter for Arab guerrillas attacking Israel. There have been dozens of incidents in the area in the past three years, including an attack on an Israeli bus near Berem that killed 12 school children.

Demands Renewed. Now, Berem and Iqrit residents once again are pressing their demand to return home…

Jewish Supporters. What has helped the villagers stir favorable public opinion is that the Beremites are of the Maronite Catholic faith, remembered here for the solid support it voiced for European Jewry under Hitler.

The Beremites also proved their allegiance to Israel by testifying in favor of the Jews to various British committees that sought a peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem in the 1940s. The Rev.

Kemal Farah, 29-year-old spiritual leader of Berem, rejects Israel’s argument on security, pointing out that displaced villagers have been resettled in Gush Halav, only two miles east of Berem and equally accessible to infiltrators. Today, Berem is a heap of rubble, overgrown by wild grapevines. Next to it stands the remains of a third-century Jewish synagogue.

The synagogue has been fenced in and a small park built for tourists. But the signposting says nothing about a Christian village or church, and foreign visitors have no idea that 24 years ago people lived on the hill.

Part of Berem’s 3,000 acres of farmland row belong to Jewish settlements, Israel’s attorney general, Meir Shamgar, says ample compensation was offered the villagers, but only six out of 90 families accepted. The six received a total of some $50,000, plus 10 building plots and farm acreage equal to what they owned in Berem.

Despite the government decision not to allow them to return, the Beremites have vowed to fight on. ‘We have owned this land for 600 years,’ said Riad Suliman.”

Context added by this archive

Kafr Bir’im, the village the Batrice family came from — a photograph of its ruins runs with the 2021 Courier-Journal column in this archive, forty-nine years later. The villagers are Maronite Catholics. The paper sets both accounts of 1948 side by side and says the argument will decide any settlement on the refugees.

The archive holds this village three times: 1972, 1973 and 2021.

Cite this clipping

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• Israeli couple: Army murdered PalestiniansPueblo Chieftain · 22 April 1992

More from the 1970s

• Beirut Moves Against Guerrillas To Quell Israeli RaidsThe Times · 29 February 1972
• Giant Step for Arab WomenThe New York Times · 29 February 1972
• Israeli Raid Forces Beirut To Face Up To Guerrilla ProblemColumbia Record · 3 March 1972
• Israel to Discipline Officers In Bedouins’ DisplacementThe New York Times · 27 March 1972
• Artist Seeking Mideast TogethernessThe Daily Progress · 3 May 1972
• Israel cites POW torture; Palestinians ask statehoodThe Morning Call · 10 June 1972
• All 338 clippings from the 1970s →

The same copy, in 1 other paper

• Arabs Seek Recovery of Town Taken by Israelis 24 Years AgoThe Forum12 October 1972CP-1972-002

Their text and this one are nearly identical. Found by comparing transcriptions, not by reading them side by side, so this establishes that the text overlaps and not that these papers ran the same dispatch. How this was done.