Summary
Western Galilee village inhabited by Christians, Muslims and some Druze, which remained after a surrender agreement signed on 10 July 1948 through Druze mediation — one of Manna’s cases of Non-expulsion in the Battles of the Ten Days (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.26, 68).
Details
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On 15 July 1948 in Manna’s Introduction’s dating, Abu Snan, Kufr Yasif and Yarka surrendered without a battle; in Chapter 1 the agreement itself is dated 10 July, when council head Yani Yani took advantage of his Druze neighbours’ relations with the Jews and signed a surrender agreement mediated by Haim Orbach from Nahariyya (see Open questions on the source page for the two dates as printed in different chapters) (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.26, 68).
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When the Israeli army entered, it commandeered one house as a barracks, expelled the refugees who had found refuge in Kufr Yasif, and arrested dozens of young men of conscription age into prisoner-of-war detention centres, despite the village having surrendered without resistance (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.68).
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Kufr Yasif and neighbouring villages such as al-Makr, al-Jdayda and Abu Snan nevertheless felt relief, their fate being better than that of the coastal villages which had been totally evacuated (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.68).
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National Liberation League activists and leaders returned to Haifa from Lebanon by way of al-Bi’na, Kufr Yasif and other villages in the region in the period before Operation Hiram (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.84).
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On 1 March 1949 a combing operation expelled hundreds from Kufr Yasif — Quaker witness Charles Freeman testified 239 individuals — most of them refugees from ‘Amqa and Kuwaykat who had not been registered in the village’s November 1948 census; a UN observer reported “the Jews stole their jewels and the money they had with them,” and al-Ittihad condemned the arrest of many National Liberation League members among the expellees (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.179).
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In the January 1954 local elections, council head Yani Yani was elected for a second term with the support of two communist council members; military governor Ya’cov Muhriz and his men tried unsuccessfully to prevent the coalition with Maki members, a failure that alarmed the interior ministry and military government ahead of Nazareth’s elections (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.280-281).
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Yani Yani later headed the nationalist activists in the July 1958 discussions for an Arab Front, and was among the signatories of the 27 December 1956 declaration on Kafr Kassim and among the non-communist leaders who resigned from the front in January 1959 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295-296).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, Non-expulsion, Druze, National Liberation League