Harriet Sherwood in Iqrit
guardian.co.uk,
Walaa Sbaid, 26, says people currently have the legal right to return to Iqrit 'only in a coffin'. Photograph: Harriet Sherwood
On a breezy hilltop in sight of the Lebanese border, a village last populated 65 years ago is being reclaimed from the dead for the living. Vegetables and herbs have been planted amid the rubble; a couple of donkeys graze on spring grass; traditional food is cooked and eaten in a makeshift structure next to the Church of Our Lady, where mass is celebrated for up to 200 worshippers on the first Saturday of every month.
This is Iqrit, a Palestinian Christian village in northern Galilee, whose inhabitants left in the bitter war that followed the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, and who have never been permitted to return to their land and razed homes.
But in recent months, a group of young men, grandsons of Iqrit's original residents, have moved back in an attempt to reclaim and rebuild the village.
And as Palestinians commemorate on Wednesday the Nakba, or catastrophe, of the loss of their land to Israel 65 years ago, work is being completed on a proposal for around 500 homes to be built on the site for the descendants of Iqrit's inhabitants, 90% of whom wish to return to the village. The plan is expected to be published in September.
What is unusual about this demand for the "right of return" is that the villagers and their descendants are Israeli citizens, mostly living in the area, rather than refugees in Palestine and in the diaspora.
In November 1948, six months after the state of Israel was declared, the new Israeli army arrived at Iqrit to tell the villagers they must leave because the area was dangerous. Most of the 490 inhabitants were transferred to a nearby village, taking only basic necessities, in the belief they would be gone for two weeks. But the area was declared a military zone and the villagers were forbidden from returning........"
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