Summary
Nazareth-district village, one of four in its district depopulated in July 1948, whose inhabitants suffered two massacres at the hands of the Golani Brigade, were expelled to Nazareth as Present Absentees, and were allowed to return to their homes at the beginning of 1950 after a year and a half — a permitted return Manna calls unique among similar villages (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.32, 191-192, 196-197).
Details
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‘Illut’s uprooting began on 16 July 1948, when Golani Brigade soldiers attacked from west and south, gathered inhabitants by the mosque, and blew up houses in which arms were found, including mukhtar Hasan Muhammad al-Ahmad’s house and three others (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.197).
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An officer named Nassim led a group of young men to an olive grove and, in Manna’s account, “he made them stand in a single line, then the machinegun on the officer’s car mowed them down within minutes”; sixteen martyrs are named, and two others were wounded and recovered; ten more ‘Illut villagers were killed near the spring at ‘Ayn al-Bayda, where they had been hiding (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.197).
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Two weeks later soldiers returned, imposed a curfew and looted houses and the school — furniture, horses, beehives and dozens of cattle — after which the majority went to Nazareth, most finding refuge at the Salesian monastery, leaving only a few elderly people in the village (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.197).
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Manna notes Israeli authorities suppressed news of the massacres and expulsion, villagers acquiesced in silence for fear of retribution, and both Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe fail, in his account, to mention the two massacres — Morris noting only that ‘Illut became an abandoned village, Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine not mentioning them at all (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.197).
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The return of ‘Illut’s people from Nazareth was, with Ilabun, one of the returns Israel was compelled to accept; in Chapter 4’s conclusion Manna sets their unanswered question against Iqrit and Kfar Bir’im: why nearby ‘Illut was allowed back while they were not (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.184-185).
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The return itself (Chapter 5, part 6): after a year and a half the authorities consented to the expellees’ return from the Salesian monastery; about half returned home and half remained refugees in Jordan and Syria, and the military governor appointed Dhib Abu Ras as mukhtar. Historian Mustafa ‘Abbasi argues the pressure of senior Salesian figures and the French consul in Haifa was the most important factor; an official delivered the government order to the monastery head on 3 January and the villagers, led by the monk Dubrovsky, walked home on 4 January — early 1950 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.198).
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The authorities still considered the returnees “present absentees” and confiscated their lands; moshav Nahalal had already asked on 8 August 1948 to annex about 700 dunums, writing: “It seems to us that the time is ripe to transfer these lands to permanent Jewish ownership.” The returnees regained only part of their lands, the rest expropriated to neighbouring Jewish settlements (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.198-199).
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Fear kept the villagers from commemorating the events for dozens of years; on 8 May 2008 they commemorated the martyrs before hundreds of participants, council head Ibrahim Abu Ras stating the village’s lands had extended to 27,000 dunums before the Nakba and that only 3,330 dunums were left in 2008 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.198).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, Golani Brigade, Nazareth, Ilabun, Saffuriyya, Present Absentees