Summary
Melkite bishop — named George Hakim in Manna’s Introduction, among the communist rivals allowed back to Haifa and the Galilee after the early 1949 elections (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.26) — who in Chapter 4 helped hundreds of members of his sect settle anew, pressed Tarshiha to accept transfer, and made the agreement with Yehoshua Palmon under which Christians returned from Lebanon to Galilee villages, in Manna’s account.
Details
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About three months after Elias Shoufani returned to his home in Mi’lya (also printed Ma’liya, PDF p.177), Shoufani was able to obtain an identity card with the help of Melkite Bishop Hakim, who helped hundreds of members of his sect to settle anew in Haifa and Galilee (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.177).
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Bishop Hakim tried to convince those left in Tarshiha, most of whom belonged to his denomination, to accept moving somewhere else; in early June 1949 he came to the village and promised he would try to settle them in ‘Akka or anywhere else they chose, but the villagers were neither tempted by his proposals nor convinced by his implied threats and were adamant about remaining in their village (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.177).
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Some ‘Ilabun villagers returned from Lebanon thanks to an agreement between Yehushua Palmon, the prime minister’s advisor, and Bishop Hakim; that agreement secured the return of hundreds of Christians from Lebanon to the villages of the Galilee in return for the bishop’s cooperation with Israel and its policies (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.194).
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Manna holds that Benny Morris’s statement that hundreds of ‘Ilabun’s inhabitants returned following that agreement is not accurate: the majority of ‘Ilabun villagers had returned by May 1949, before the deal with the bishop, and those who returned after the deal were no more than several dozen (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.194).
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Chapter 7 gives the return’s politics: Hakim first visited Haifa at the end of June 1948; his permanent return was approved in early 1949 amid international pressure after Resolution 194, and he returned by plane on 18 February 1949 as Mapai’s chosen rival to the communists — in his printing-press licence application he offered to “purify the air that was full of communist poison”, he resumed al-Rabita, imposed a church ban on communists in his denomination, and was encouraged “to establish a moderate Arab party” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.265-266).
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His camp’s rivalry with Maki turned violent: his scouts’ 14 April 1952 Nazareth march ended in a clash in which Ni’mat al-Qasim died, bringing a month-long curfew, and the October 1952 fire in Ilabun’s Communist Party club killed Suhayl Zurayq — events that, in Manna’s account, consolidated the party in ‘Ilabun instead (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.268).
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His help returned individuals including the Srouji brothers of Nazareth — ‘Aziz, arrested near Fassuta in 1951 and released through Hakim, and ‘Anis, returned by family reunification in summer 1951, who became the bishop’s architect and a pillar of the bishop-close Home Bloc in the 1954 Nazareth municipal elections (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.267).
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Chapter 7’s remainder and the Epilogue (part 8): of the two men allowed back to challenge the communists, Hakim continued the fight after al-Hawwari left politics, bringing Mas’ad Qassis back from Lebanon into the Knesset in 1951; his Catholics held a seat on the Mapai lists through Qassis thereafter (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.272).
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His protection kept Qassis in the Knesset in March 1956, when Sayf al-Din al-Zu’bi was pressured to yield his seat to Jabr Ma’di instead — evidence, for Manna, of the bishop’s strong and enduring influence on the Democratic list (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.281).
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Intelligence used him as a channel against the independents: a handwritten note signed “Carmel” to Uri Lubrani’s office records an approach to Hakim to warn Elias Kusa to keep quiet, though Kusa contacted Maki’s leaders anyway (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.296).
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Kusa’s 1960 booklets attacked the Ben-Gurion government and its collaborators, “Bishop Hakim being the most notable among them” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.296-297).