Tour of Kafr ‘Inan
Saturday, 3.10.2009

Umar Ighbariyyeh
Photographs:  Lamis Al’owdeh

Participants in Zochrot’s tour of the site of the Palestinian village Kafr ‘Inan met at Hananya junction, about two kilometers east of Sheva junction.  “This place was holy.  Until 1948, the oak tree was called “al-Mubarakeh,” the blessed.  People respected it, and feared behaving badly nearby.  They didn’t lie, didn’t steal.  Farmers left their plows under the tree all night, and no one dared touch them.  Right here, where we’re standing , were graves, graves of villagers.  Today, as you can see, the Jews turned the place into the tomb of Rabbi Halfta and his sons.”  That’s how 75-year-old Hassan Mansour (Abu Marwan) began the tour.  Today, Abu Marwan and his family live in the neighboring village of al-Rameh, together with about one-fourth of Kafr ‘Inan’s refugees.  The remaining village residents were exiled to Lebanon, and most were placed in the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp.  Soon Abu Marwan will show us the house in which he was born in 1934, and from which he was expelled in 1948 along with the 400 residents of the village.  We numbered some 100 people, following him and hearing the pain in his voice.  “We flew white flags from the houses, and placed a large white flag on the road, but they still came the next day to expel us.”  He remembers where the 73 village houses stood, until the nakba.  We walked among the ruins of the buildings which Israel razed to the ground, except for one house, that of Khalid Yusuf, at the eastern edge of the village. Abu Marwan, his wife, their sons, daughters, grandchildren and other relatives accompanied us excitedly through their village.  We felt – even though 61 years had passed – that we were visiting the family in their home village.  We felt this way even more strongly at the end of the tour when one of the family’s young men carrying a crate of apples went among the “guests,” offering them to us.  al -Mujanzara cave, at the eastern end of the village, has become the tomb of Hananya.  The cemetery of the Palestinian village of Kafr ‘Inan is nearby, neglected and desecrated.  We erected a sign commemorating the cemetery.  As we walked, Abu Marwan named the families who had lived in the demolished houses.  He also held a map he had drawn from memory, and from information he had gathered, indicating all the houses that had once existed.  He stood next to a house in the center of the village, announcing “This is my home, I was born here, I lived here until I was 13.”  His father had been the village mukhtar.  We erected a sign here as well, identifying Abu Marwan’s home.  At the beginning of 1949, Israeli soldiers asked the mukhtar to gather the villagers “for a census”. They also said that young men who had fled to the hills would be allowed to return. When they did so, the soldiers took seven and drove away with them. “They collected the rest of the villagers in al- Rub’an, here in this area and separated the young men from the women, children and elderly.  They told us to walk north.  Thirty-five young men, including my father, the mukhtar, were imprisoned.  They fired into the air to hurry us along.  On the way, near the Sheva junction, we saw the corpses of the seven young men who’d been driven away earlier.  They’d been murdered.”

We continued the tour of the village, passed the ruins of the mosque and reached al-Seeh, which had once been a natural pool where the villagers watered their animals and the youngsters would jump in and swim.  Today the pool is dry, a lifeless pit.

Participants in the tour received the booklet, “Remembering Kafr ‘Inan,” which we had prepared for the occasion to make people aware of the village that had been erased from the face of the earth. Today it’s difficult to locate the destroyed village' on Route 85. It is on a hill alongside Kfar Hananya, which was established on the village’s land. we erected a commemorative sign calling attention to the location of Kafr ‘Inan.