al-Nahr - النهر: Because They Wanted the Land

Because They Wanted the Land

Refugee Hussein Mubaraki lives five kilometers from his native village of al-Nahr, to which he is not allowed to return. (Photos Isabelle Humphries)

I AM FROM al-Nahr, in the district of Akka, a village of 420 people. The village was 6,000 dunams (1,500 acres), including a river. It was a village rich in water, with fertile lands. Every day we had a wagon full of oranges, lemons and other produce which would go out to the cities, to Akka and Haifa.

In 1948 we did nothing...[yet] in al-Nahr they killed children...my brother was one of them—he was one year old. And also old people... sick people.

Why did they do that? Because they wanted the land...

Before 1948, the Jewish town of Nahariya existed and there were no problems between us—we were neighbors. When the war came it changed; after that there were many Jews in the military, and they had weapons...Because of that people were frightened.

In al-Nahr—I saw them kill two people with my own eyes. I was 17...

We fled to Abu Snaan village...no, first we went to Tarshiha—then they hit Tarshiha with planes—and we came here...Just two or three families from our village found shelter here, not more... the rest are in Lebanon.

Palestinians remaining inside Israel were put under military rule from 1948 to 1966:

Military rule was like this: they made the military rule so that when we came from al-Nahr to here we couldn’t go [back] there—it was a military zone....So that people couldn’t go. If people went they would put them in prison. If you entered the military zone...that’s what happened. In order to take the land...

One day in 1949 the army came to the shelter village...and took the refugees—they put them in trucks—they went to the houses [to take them]. They made an iron fence—and put them there. My father and mother were also put in there, but the mukhtar of Abu Snaan came and talked with the captain and they were let out. But the other people—they sent them out [to Jordan].

In Kafr Yasif some people tried to resist this expulsion. When they put the people in the army trucks they came out and lay down in front of the trucks to prevent them from sending the people away...[But it was to no avail—700 were expelled]

Hussein Mubaraki, born in 1930 in al-Nahr village, Western Galilee, today lives as an internal refugee five kilometers away, in Abu Snaan village.