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| Justice for Ikrit and Biram By Ha'aretz Daily | eMail to a friend
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Posted on October 10, 2001
The below article appeared in Ha'aretz Daily on October 10, 2001. Click here to view the full report ar Ha'aretz online.
The security cabinet's
decision yesterday over the pending High Court petition regarding
the villagers of Ikrit and Biram was partly based on the
formulation that no previous government had ever promised to
return the residents to their lands, and reconfirmed "as of
now" a 1972 government decision not to allow them to return.
Among the factors leading to yesterday's decision is the demand by
55 Arab villages in Israel to return to expropriated land and
concern that the Palestinian Authority would exploit the precedent
to press its own demands for a right of return for refugees.
The residents of Ikrit and Biram were uprooted from their homes in
1948, "until the security situation allows their
return." In 1951, the High Court ruled that the villagers
were allowed to return "as long as no emergency decree"
against it has been issued. The government hastened to issue such
a decree against the Ikrit evacuees, and two months later, the IDF
blew up houses in that village. In 1953, it blew up the houses of
Biram. Only the churches of the two villages were left standing.
Two years later, the land of the two villages - 16,000 dunam in
Ikrit and 12,000 dunam in Biram - were expropriated for
establishing Jewish settlements.
In February 1997, the evacuees petitioned the High Court of
Justice, which gave the government time to "examine the
issue." In mid-1998, the court issued a temporary injunction
ordering the government to report its position within 90 days.
Since then, the government has received three further delays,
including one due to the change of government and one because of
"the situation on the northern border, the negotiations with
the Palestinians and the question of Israeli Arabs."
While there has not been a formal government commitment to return
the evacuees, in November 1948, David Ben-Gurion wrote in his
diary that "as for the Christians of Biram and other
villages... we will willingly consider their return only when the
situation on the border is stabilized." In 1977, Menachem
Begin promised to return them to their families, and in that
spirit, in 1998, then-justice minister Tzachi Hanegbi recommended
to the Netanyahu government that "no obstacles should be
placed in the way of the return of the evacuees in the spirit of
the Libai and Klugman recommendations which provide a step forward
and a strong basis for negotiation."
Those committees recommended in 1995 and 1996 that an area of
1,200 dunam be allocated for the re-establishment of Biram and
Ikrit as community settlements on the basis of long-term land
leases. Family representatives rejected the proposals - another
reason for the cabinet's refusal to allow the villagers to return.
The government will also argue in its case to the High Court that
most of the families have already reached compensation agreements,
in the form of land or money, with the government.
Any decision on the issue is problematic. The court will have to
deal with, among other issues, the "special" nature of
this case compared with other land claims made by Israeli Arabs
and the status of kibbutzim, moshavim and other farms using land
in the area. Nonetheless, the evacuees of Ikrit and Biram, their
children and their grandchildren have become a symbol of an
injustice that requires rectification with wisdom and
conciliation. The cabinet's position, based as it is on legalistic
and formulaic positions, ignores the national and civic
significance of symbolism in this complicated and difficult era,
and by doing so, casts a shadow of moral and political lacunae on
its members.
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