Ikrith dream heads to reality as Israeli court issues injunction
Palestine, Judicial, 7/2/1998

The road back to the Palestinian village of Ikrith seems to be shortening but a lot needs to be done before the 50-year-old dream comes true.

The Israeli High Court on Thursday issued an interim injunction ordering the Israeli government to explain within three months why the Palestinians who were kicked out of their village back in 1948 have since then been denied permission to return.

Headed by the High Court President Aharon Barak, the court rejected a request by the Israeli government representative for a further three-month delay in order for the government to review the case of the Ikrith deportees. It instructed the state to decide within the three-month period if the villagers are allowed back or not. If not, the court will issue its own ruling which is expected to be based on a similar 1951 ruling that supported the Palestinian villagers' right to return to their village.

Back in 1948, during the fighting that erupted after Israel was proclaimed, the Israeli army ordered the villagers of Ikrith, a Palestinian village on the borders between Palestine and Lebanon, to leave for two weeks "until acts of belligerency are over." The fortnight ended and the villagers were never allowed back.

On 24 April 1951, the Israeli authorities declared the village a reservation and in July the same year the High Court ruled that the villagers of Ikrith should be allowed to return. The army, however, issued an order two months later declaring the whole village and its surroundings a closed military zone. On Christmas eve 1951, Israeli army bulldozers razed the whole are and leveled all the houses, except for the Greek Catholic Church, that remained until today as if it is the only witness to the injustice that struck the village.

Exactly three months ago, the court met and accepted a request by the state representative to postpone the deliberations in the villagers appeal for three months, during which a special governmental committee would sit and discuss the matter with all its legal aspects. Ikrith villagers' lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, then warned against the continued red tape procedures that the government has been using to avoid addressing the case. The court accepted his warnings yet allowed the three months the government asked for provided a decision is taken.

Dozens of Palestinians from the village, who currently dispersed among a number of towns and villages up in the Galilee, arrived in two buses to the court in Jerusalem to attend the hearing. Their trip to Jerusalem lasted almost three hours. It took them the same time to return back home. But despite the exhaustion caused by the trip, many were full of hopes that their ordeal is heading to an end. After speaking to their lawyer immediately as he went out of the courtroom, many villagers said they understood that the chances of the Israeli government to continue to ignore their case were becoming slim day after day. "The lawyer explained to us what the court's interim injunction meant. It simply gives the government three months to decide why the 1951 high court ruling had not been implemented," said Basem Yaacov, member of the Ikrith follow-up committee. He expressed hopes that before the end of this year, Palestinians from the village will be allowed for the first time since 1948 to rebuild their homes in the village.

Whether the Israeli government will decide or wait for the High Court to resolve this question is not clear. But many from the village assess that it would be better for the Israeli government to "pull the mat from underneath the court and unilaterally take a decision allowing the villagers to return." They argue that such a move would be better in the government's point of view than having another High Court decision issued in favor of the Palestinian villagers. Some of them even believe a new court order would serve as a precedent that might help other Palestinians in the future to claim their right to return to their village.

But legal experts do not believe a decision on Ikrith can serve a precedent for other cases because the status of Ikrith is unique. It was the only case in which a high court decided to allow the villagers to return to their homes while the rest of the Palestinian villages and towns were attacked and their residents forced out without any chance of appeal or return. Today's atmosphere in Israel is not as it was back in 1951, says Basem Yaacob. "In those days, there was a military government in Israel and the Arabs were considered first degree enemies of the state. Today, things have changed and despite the lack of equality between Arabs and Jews, yet Arabs are, at least as far as the law in Israel is concerned, an integral part of the state." He added that even the status of the High Court in Israel today has been much improved as opposed to the old days when the authorities opted not to listen to court rulings.

The other possibility that some of the villagers expect is the government opening a new channel of negotiations with the Palestinians of Ikrith, with the aim of gaining more time. For this purpose, said Yaacob, the Palestinian families solicited their lawyer to handle all contacts with the Israeli government. "He has our guidance and knows well what we need. He will be our spokesman and representative before the government and that spares us a lot of internal frictions that might only serve the Israeli government."

Previous Stories:
  Memories of a veteran Palestinian fighter in 1948   (5/1/1998)
  Interviews: 50th anniversary of Deir Yassin massacre   (4/10/1998)
  Israeli court speaks about a two-week mass expulsion that lasted 50 years   (3/23/1998)

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