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Majd al-Krum

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aliasesMajd al-Kurum

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Summary

Galilee village, home village of Adel Manna, whose 1948 story — surrender, the massacre in al-‘Ayn Square, the expulsion of hundreds and the return of some families — opens Nakba and Survival and stands in the Preface as an example of the suffering of the Palestinians who fell victim to killing and expulsion, some of whom managed to return (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.12, 18).

Details

  • A first army unit entered from the west, from the direction of al-Birwa (subsequently Ahyahud), respected the surrender agreement and did no harm; a week later other soldiers came from the east, tore down houses and killed young men in al-‘Ayn Square (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.12, 14).

  • The first person executed in the village was Abu Ma‘yuf, husband of Manna’s grandmother Zahra; his house was blown up in front of his eyes despite a protective letter from Mano Friedman (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.15-16).

  • Haim Orbach and Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu intervened during the massacre and stopped the killing (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.17, 19).

  • Two months or so after the massacre, soldiers assembled the men for a search and identify operation and expelled hundreds in trucks to Wadi ‘Ara; the Manna family reached Ayn al-Hilwa camp near Sidon and returned by sea in the summer of 1951 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.15). The family expulsion is also dated to January 1949 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.16); see the source page’s Open questions.

  • Similar massacres took place in ‘Ilabun and other Galilee villages, in the accounts Manna heard from his father and relatives (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.14).

  • Refugees from Sha‘b, al-Birwa, al-Damun and other Galilee villages took up residence in Majd al-Krum itself, poorer than the villagers because they owned no houses or land (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.18).

  • Chapter 2 in full (part 3) gives the surrender in detail: about 2,000 inhabitants plus hundreds of refugees; the ARA commander advised the village on 29 October 1948 not to leave and to seek a surrender agreement; a delegation reached Haim Orbach through the Ma’di family of Yarka; the 123rd company entered peacefully on 30 October and collected twenty rifles and, after pressure, fifteen more; Golani soldiers arriving from ‘Ilabun fired by mistake and were stopped (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.86-89).

  • The massacre is dated and detailed: on Friday 5 November 1948 a unit assembled the men in al-‘Ayn Square, demanded supposedly hidden arms within an hour on pain of an execution every half hour, shot Abu Ma’yuf first and then four more by firing squad, tortured and killed two visiting young men from Sha’b in an olive orchard, and fired on two women — eight to nine killed in all — before Haim Orbach and Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu arrived and halted the killings with three men, mukhtar Hajj ‘Abd Manna’ first, already in line (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.103-105).

  • The army denied the massacre to UN observers; Haifa intelligence officer Tsvi Rabinovich (“Khawaja Ghazal”) told Manna in 1998 that on orders he had searched the UN team’s car on the road west of the village and seized the film of an exhumed martyr’s body the observers had photographed (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.105-107).

  • Benny Morris was unaware of the massacre until Manna told him in person, and overlooked military documents he himself had given Manna on the army’s January 1949 return and its expulsion of hundreds of the village’s residents (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.106).

  • Chapter 4 (part 4) gives the January 1949 wholesale expulsion: after a census on 12-14 December 1948 and before registration receipts were distributed on 17-18 January 1949, two combing operations (9 and 14 January) expelled 536 individuals beyond the borders, over half of General Elimelech Avnir’s 1,038 Galilee total (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.159).

  • Tsvi Rabinovich’s 9 January report records 506 individuals investigated and 355 deported, and complains late transport prevented transporting 300 additional individuals; military-government representative Shlomo Pulman’s letter records violent treatment, curses, kicks, and mukhtar Hajj ‘Abd Salim Manna’ beaten with rifle butts and taken to Nazareth Hospital in critical condition (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.159-160).

  • The 1 June 1949 western Galilee intelligence report still estimated forty-two ‘Infiltrators’ in Majd al-Krum (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.158).

  • Chapter 4’s remainder (part 5) details the 9 January expulsion: 355 residents including men, women and children were expelled that day, taken west and south to Khubbayza near Wadi ‘Ara, fired over, and walked to ‘Ara, Nablus and Jenin, many reaching Lebanon by spring via Transjordan and Syria; a friend of Haim Orbach, “Abu Sa’id,” talked his family off the bus by invoking Orbach’s promised visit (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.161-163).

  • The 14 January operation expelled mostly refugees from Sha’b, al-Birwa and al-Damun sheltering in the village; Tsvi Rabinovich told Manna anyone without a census receipt was expelled, even a registered man who had lost it — at a time when receipts had not yet been given to all the Shaghur’s inhabitants (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.162-164).

  • A further operation on 6 November 1949, using a rumour that identity cards would be distributed to the registered, exiled 250 to 260 people to the Jenin area; al-Yawm published an article about the expulsion of two hundred from the village, and al-Ittihad, quoting its rival and Kol HaAm, put the number at three hundred and said most were residents expelled before receiving receipts (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.165).

  • Returns ran through the courts and the 1951 elections: Hanna Naqqara’s summer 1951 central-court case for forty-eight Majd al-Krum residents set the precedent by which Muhammad ‘Ali Sa’id Qaddah (printed Muhammad Sa’id Qaddah at PDF p.167) and Manna’s own family returned by sea from Tyre to Shavei Tzion in mid-July 1951, and dozens more returned “through Haim Orbach” in return for family votes for Mapai’s lists (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.166-167).

  • Return remained lethal: Abu Jamil’s diaries record returnees killed by shooting and mines near the border in 1950–51 — Husayn Khalil Qaddah, Sa’id Rafi’ and his brother Mustafa, and Muhammad Hikma, killed 28 May 1951 by a mine — the diaries as reported a page earlier also record an unnamed refugee from Sha’b, a former resident of Marj al-Krum as printed, killed and two others wounded by a mine on 28 May 1951, and the text does not say whether these are the same incident (see Open questions on the source page) — and a seven-day curfew imposed to make inhabitants turn in hidden relatives (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.167-168).

  • The Appendices (part 8) reproduce the army’s own Majd al-Krum paperwork: Battalion 123’s intelligence reports of 31 October and 1 November 1948 record the surrender (delegation from Majd al-Krum, al-Bi’na, Dayr al-Asad and Nahaf; cease-fire accepted 12:30 and signed 14:25 on 30 October), the friendly-fire exchange with Battalion 12’s column from al-Rama, twenty rifles handed in by noon and fifteen more after pressure and threats, Battalion 122’s choice of 1,000 labourers to repair the Acre road, and an urging of “a swift and precise combing operation”; the village’s population is estimated at about 1,800 in the first report and about 2,000 in the later ones, as printed in each (see Open questions on the source page) (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.298-303).

  • Col. Baruch’s secret letter of 18 November 1948 (Appendix 4) records that the village had no military governor or officer when UN observers visited on 10 November and heard residents’ accusations of “atrocities of plunder and murder”, which would cause damage “when they are transmitted to Paris, where they will be exaggerated” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.304).

  • Tsvi Rabinovich’s report on the 9 January 1949 operation (Appendix 6) records 506 men checked and 355 expelled, 300 more not transported because the vehicles arrived late, and two soldiers who looted a shop to be tried; Shlomo’s report of 12 January (Appendix 7) records the same operation’s “extremely boorish” conduct, expellees beaten even “merely for being a refugee”, and mukhtar Hajj ‘Abd al-Salim beaten with rifle butts and hospitalised in Nazareth in critical condition (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.308-311).

Nakba and Survival, Muhammad Haydar (Abu Jamil), Adel Manna, Ayn al-Hilwa, Ilabun

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