Eilabun - عيلبون: Cleaning Eilabun: The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland

By Michael Palumbo

Pages 163-168

CHAPTER X

Operation Hiram

Destroy all of that land; beat down their pillars and break their statues

and waste all of their high places, cleansing the land and dwelling in it.

For I have given it to you for a possession.

Numbers 34:52, 53

The fighting had ended several days before but US Air Force Captain E. J. Zeuty continued his daily patrols of central Galilee. This was an important part of his duties as a UN observer in the region. From his base at Safed, Zeuty rode his jeep up and down the roads in the area. He frequently met Arab refugees who were fleeing the fighting, which had started on 29 October, when the Israelis had launched Operation Hiram. This offensive was designed to complete the conquest of Galilee that had begun during the spring. Many of the refugees told Captain Zeuty horror stories. He was not prepared, however, for what he saw on the morning of 3 November.

In the first light of day, Zeuty noticed a column of women and children heading down the road. They seemed particularly ragged, and he later learned that they had been marching for days from Elabun, their village many miles away. In his report, the American officer wrote that the refugees were with 'Jewish civil police who were guarding them.' When he questioned the Israelis about the destination of their prisoners 'they could give no answer.' The absence of young men among the prisoners was conspicuous and ominous. The women tearfully told the story of how most of their men had been murdered or kidnapped. Gradually, after intense investigation by several teams of UN observers the tragedy of Elabun unfolded.¹

For some time the area around Elabun had been occupied by Fawzi al-Kaukji's ALA forces. When the Israelis attacked on 29 October, the Arab volunteers fled, as they had done on so many other occasions. At 5 a.m. on 30 October, Israeli forces entered the village. The people of Elabun, all 750 of whom were Christian, had taken refuge in the two local churches. A yellow flag of submission flew from the Orthodox church and a white banner from the Greek Catholic church.

The leaders of the community were Father Hanna Daoud, an eighty-five-year-old vicar of the local Greek Catholic church and his son Markos, also a Greek Catholic priest. For two centuries, the Daoud family had been Greek Catholic clergy­men in Elabun. When the town was occupied, Father Markos approached the Jews saying, 'I put my village under the protection of the State of Israel.' But the Israelis refused to be placated. Their commander held the Arab civilians responsible for the mutilation of the bodies of two Jewish soldiers who had fallen during the fighting. Father Markos pleaded that the villagers were not responsible for what obviously was the work of the retreating ALA volunteers. 'Assemble all of your people in the village square' was the curt reply.

On the square in front of Father Markos' house, the Jewish commander yelled, 'You want to make war, here you have it!' as his men mowed down four young men with machine guns. Three other youths including a boy of seventeen were taken to a nearby field where they were killed in a similar manner. In all, thirteen young men were murdered in the early morn­ing hours.

The remaining villagers were evicted from their homes. As was the usual Israeli practice, the surviving young men were seized as prisoners-of-war even though there was no evidence that they had resisted the invaders. In groups the women and children were marched off to the Lebanese border. It is not known how many perished during the exodus, but considering the conditions and the attitude of the Israelis, the casualties may have been considerable.

The looting of the Christian town included the desecration of the churches and the destruction of numerous sacred icons. Furniture, livestock and all other movable property was carried off by the Israelis. There was little effort made by the Zionist soldiers to camouflage their crimes, so the UN observers had no difficulty evaluating what had happened. The American officer, Captain Zeuty reported, There is no doubt in this observer's mind that the Jews committed murder and plunder.' Much evidence was given by Father Markos who pointed out to the UN observers many important facts, including the locations where the murders had taken place and the burial sites of the victims. Commandant Perrossier, a French UN observer, was uncomfortable that Father Markos had given much of his evidence in the presence of an Israeli liaison officer. Perrossier noted: 'Having seen how the Jews behaved in Upper Galilee, I fear that this priest will suffer retaliation.'

The behaviour of the Jews in Upper Galilee in October was even worse than their conduct during the spring offensive in Galilee. Scores of villages were occupied by the Israelis and as indicated in the reports of the UN observers, there was a disturbing pattern of murder and looting followed by the mass expulsion of civilians. During the earlier campaign in Galilee murders had generally only been committed in villages which had resisted or which had a reputation of committing atrocities against the Jews. But during Operation Hiram some of the worst Israeli crimes took place in towns that peacefully offered to surrender.

There were several reasons why the Israelis were noticeably more brutal during their October offensive. Although there were many UN observers in Galilee during Operation Hiram, in general the Israelis were less concerned about foreign public opinion than during earlier campaigns. As the war went through its various stages, the Jews became increasingly bolder as the power of their military forces grew. By October, the Israelis realized that no one could stop them from creating a sizeable Jewish state that would be largely free of Arabs. Adverse publicity in the American and European press about Zionist war crimes or the forcible expulsion of the Arabs was not as great a concern as it had been a few months previously.

Besides, it was becoming more difficult to expel the Arabs necessitating more brutal methods. In the May offensive in Galilee, it had been sufficient for Allon to send Jewish notables to Arab villages in order to frighten off the Arab civilians of some towns before the Palmach army had even arrived. In other villages a short bombardment or firing over the heads of the Arab civilians had been enough to get the message across. Many of the people of Galilee fled in the spring believing that they would return to their homes in the van of the Arab armies.

By October the people of northern Galilee realized that if they left their homes, they probably would never return. According to Mansour Kardosh during the later stage of the war, 'people had already learned some lessons.'² Many refugees from Acre, Safed and other towns conquered in the spring fled to the unoccupied portions of Upper Galilee. They made it clear to the people who lived there that those who left their homes would become permanent refugees. Rumours were also circulating about the condition of the refugees in the Arab countries and on the West Bank. Since they knew what was at stake, most of the people who lay in the path of Operation Hiram were determined to remain in their homes. The Arab civilians would find, however, that the Israelis would stop at nothing in order to drive them out.

Many of the towns where atrocities had been committed were visited by teams of UN observers who came from France, Belgium and the United States. Although they could hardly be accused of a pro-Arab bias, their reports unanimously portray the brutal methods employed by the Jews, who resorted to murder in order to encourage the population to flee during the October offensive.

In Operation Hiram the Israelis used four brigades and a considerable number of tanks in their effort to eliminate the bulge of Arab-controlled territory in central Galilee. As the Jews had conquered a large part of both western and eastern Upper Galilee already, the territory controlled by the ALA in north central Galilee was attacked from three sides.

Safsaf was a small village which lay directly in the path of one of the Israeli columns. On the night of 29 October, many of the villagers were killed in an Israeli air attack. At sunrise the next day, Jewish forces entered the town. The villagers became apprehensive when the Israeli soldiers ordered them to gather in the central square. Um Shaladah al-Salih has vivid recollec­tions of that tragic morning. As they lined up the civilians, the soldiers ordered four girls to accompany them to the well to fetch water for the villagers. But the young women never got to the well. 'Instead, they took them to our empty houses and raped them,' Um Shaladah recalled.

Worse was in store for the young men of Safsaf. Um Shaladah watched in horror. 'About seventy of our young men were blindfolded and shot to death, one after the other, in front of us.'³ The Israelis then threw the bodies into a nearby stream. After such a massacre it was unnecessary for the Israelis to evict the survivors, most of whom left on their own. In most villages, however, the UN observers found a pattern of murder and looting followed by the kidnapping of the young men and the forcible expulsion of women, children and old people.

Two kilometres north of the main Acre-Safed highway lay al-Bi'na and Deir al-Assad, two Arab villages whose people earned their living from cattle raising and olive tree cultivation. Before the Israeli offensive about 500 ALA soldiers operated in the area but, as usual they retreated when Operation Hiram was launched on 29 October. The following day the Mukhtars of the two villages along with fifty peasants went to Birwa to implement their surrender. On Sunday, 31 October at 10 a.m., the Israeli forces entered al-Bi'na and Deir al-Assad.

The Jews gathered the entire population in a field between the two towns and demanded that they turn over their weapons. About 100 rifles were given.to the Israelis. By afternoon the children and elderly became exhausted and were in need of water. Some of the Arab men asked if they could get water from a nearby well. Everyone thought that the young men would bring back water for their family and friends but the Israelis had other plans: 'They killed them with automatic fire near the well', testified Hassan Muhidun Askbar. After investi­gating his charges, UN observers described the murders as 'wanton slaying without provocation'.⁴

SOURCES

Chapter X: Operation Hiram

1. UNA 13/3.3.1, box 11, Atrocities September-November.

2. Epp, p. 51.

3. Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus in Galilee, p. 73.

4. UNA 13/3.3.1, box 11, Atrocities September-November.

5. Nazzal, op. cit., p. 89.

6. UNA 13/3.3.1, box 11, Atrocities September-November.

1. ISA:FM 2578/11.

8. SC/OR: S/1071, p. 11 (5 November 1948).

9. Segev, pp. 56,275.

10. NA867N.01/11-1648.

11. UNA 13/3.3.1 box 11, Atrocities September-November.

12. UNA 13/3.3.1 box 11, Atrocities September-November.

13. PRO :FO 371/68679