Summary
Galilee village occupied in Operation Hiram, whose inhabitants were expelled and became refugees while its houses were left standing and given to other Arabs — first to Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu’s relatives, later in part to refugees from the Hula villages — and whose people fought a years-long struggle, in hiding, in court and by gradual return, to live in it again, in Manna’s account (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.168-174).
Details
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After occupation in Operation Hiram Israel expelled Sha’b’s villagers but did not demolish its houses; state institutions moved other Arabs into the vacant houses, first Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu and relatives from Damun, whose assigned task was to prevent the original inhabitants returning (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.168-169).
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Prime Minister’s advisor Yehoshua Palmon directed that “under no circumstances should land in the village be leased to the local population or whoever originally came from that village”; Manna and Hillel Cohen, as quoted, add revenge for Sha’b’s wartime fighting enthusiasm, centred on Abu Is’af’s combat unit, as a further reason return was barred (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.169).
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Supreme Court rulings supported villagers’ testimonies: up to Operation Hiram the village lay for months between the IDF and Rescue Army front lines, unpopulated except for some elderly people, and most inhabitants were refugees in neighbouring al-Shaghur villages; Sha’b was declared a closed military region in April 1951 (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.170).
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In the 1953 case of eight Sha’b plaintiffs represented by Muhammad Nimr al-Hawwari, the court recognised five of the eight as inhabitants; the judges doubted the mukhtar and his brother Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu had not played a role in failing to register villagers they did not want to help, and asked the legal councilor to “examine what is below the surface in Sha’b” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.171-172).
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Most Sha’b people continued living as refugees in Majd al-Krum, Dayr al-Asad and other area villages in the 1950s, and most expellees in Lebanon and Syria did not return in that decade; some returned gradually after military rule was cancelled, through land swap agreements, and many allowed back were considered refugees forced to rent their lands from the state land office (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.173-174).
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Manna calls Sha’b’s story “one of the most difficult among Galilee villages and the most egregious”: the village was not torn down, yet most of its population remain refugees in Israel and outside it to this day (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.174).
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Individual cases in Chapter 4’s remainder include Sa’id Husayn ‘Abbas, who lived in Majd al-Krum: in his letter to the military governor, among attorney Hanna Naqqara’s papers, he told how days after Sha’b’s occupation he was shot in the leg and robbed of his flock of about forty-five goats, lived in a cave for two and a half months, was arrested and exiled twice, handed in two rifles he had found, and appealed for a permanent residence permit; the brown cardboard file holding the document was written on its cover as the case of Husayn Sa’id ‘Abbas from the village of al-Bi’na, as printed, against the Ministry of the Interior — the name and the village differ from the letter itself as printed (PDF p.172-173; see Open questions on the source page).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, Gate of the Sun, Majd al-Krum, Abu Is’af, Sa’id Salih al-Asadi, Shafiq Abu ‘Abdu, Present Absentees, Ilabun