Sunday, September 03, 2006

kfar natoosh - abandoned village

A kfar natoosh is a village in Israel that the Arabs abandoned when they fled from Israeli army during the war of independence. For various reasons, mostly because the village was considered too dangerously anti-Israeli or too close to the border for national security, Israel did not allow these villagers to return to their homes. Last summer we visited Baram, a kfar natoosh that included an ancient synagogue from the time before the arabs had taken over the land that they fled. From what I understand, every year the former villagers and/or their children petition the Supreme Court to let them return home and every year the supreme court says no. They have a yearly visit back to their ruins and point at their old houses and talk about what might have been if their army had been stronger and destroyed the Jewish State. It is now a national park and nobody is allowed to build on it, not Jew nor Arab.

Sarah recently went to a Jewish kfar natoosh, it was forcibly abandoned by the Israeli army last summer. Jews are not allowed to go there anymore, but Sarah and her daughter Rivki went back to look at what once was. The arabs in the area have not taken over the area, they have not built anything or used the land for anything. Its as if they are saying to us, you took away your people for no reason, we don't even want that part.

I wonder how many parallels there are between Baram and Chomesh.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why must you use an example that people must think about. All that is necessary is to look at the Arab village on the road to Maalot,the houses are built on scrub .Were is the grass, playgrounds etc.... If they do not develope these areas then why expect anything in or around abandoned village abba