Lubya a palestinian demolished Village in Galilee Memory-History-Culture-Identity Mahmoud Issa Preface

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During the 1930s many Lubyans had been supporters of Iz al-Din al-Qassam as already mentioned in the previous chapter. After the British suppressed the 1936-39 uprising and the death of al-Qassam, however, many Lubyans, especially among the village leadership, threw their support behind Haj Amin al-Husayni. Nevertheless, there were those who were opposed to al-Husayni’s policies.

Yousef Abu Dhais (Abu Bassam) was another Lubyan who participated in the counter attack against the Jewish convoy that attacked the village. He was nineteen at the time. Yousef was an early fighter in the modern revolution. He participated in all phases of the modern revolution in its preparatory stages in Jordan and later on in al-Arkoub in south Lebanon. He is now retired and lives in Homs refugee camp in Syria.
Nadmi Othman (Abu Khalil) fought alongside Abu Bassam. Their cousin 'Aref Abdel Rahman was killed in the attack. “Five of us got together and when the [Jewish] armed vehicle passed by we decided not to open fire on it because it was a useless act,” he said. “While we were waiting a truck passed. This time we decided to shoot. I went home and threatened my sister with a knife to tell me where my mother had hidden the gun, and to make my mother give it to me.”
“I provoked her anger by telling her that they had killed our cousin. She gave me the gun and I was thus able to participate in the clash with the convoy. When Dawwas went to see how many attackers were killed, a shot was heard and he fell dead. This provoked another fierce clash in which British troops and the entire village got involved. Lubya’s hamayil surpassed each other in bravery, but the battle proved bigger than they could handle.”
The grave of Dawwas Othman is still in the cemetery of Lubya. It is one of only two names that are still legible after all these years of not taking care of the tombs. When Abu Khalil’s cousin who was with him during the battle asked him if he was afraid, he answered, “You are not braver than me.”
Despite the strength of the forces allied against them, there was a high spirit of solidarity between Lubyans and neighbouring villages such as Nasir al-Din and Saffuriyya. Lubyans provided assistance to nearby villages that were also coming under attack by Jewish forces. Nayif Hassan remembered how he helped fellow Lubyans risking severe punishment, and even risking his life. “While I was in the police, I came once to Lubya with my military car, a Dodge. I saw a group of people gathered at the entrance of the village because they wanted to go help the besieged Palestinians of Arab Nasir al-Din near Tiberias.”
“More than twenty men climbed into my vehicle and I drove with them to the headquarters of the police in Tiberias to ask for more military cars to accompany me. I did not tell the officer that I carried soldiers, nevertheless he asked me to wait for a couple of hours until the other vehicles arrived. But I decided to go alone and drove by Jewish military posts raising my hand to them each time as if I was one of them. I delivered a whole platoon of Arab fighters to their destination then went back to police headquarters.”
Other Lubyans provided assistance to the neighbouring village of Saffuriyya. “One month after the battle of Lubya the Jews attacked Nazareth and Saffuriyya.” Nasir ‘Atwani and others from Lubya “went over to help them, but it was too late. When we arrived at al-Khanouk area, between al-Raini and Nazareth,” recalled Nayif, “the Arab Salvation Army had already retreated to Ksal. Once back in Lubya, we began receiving messages from the headquarters of Qawuqji to the effect that the Jews wanted to take revenge and were preparing a big massacre in Lubya. The village elders took a decision to send women and children out of the village.”
Other elderly Lubyans confirmed this sequence of events. “Saffuriyya asked for Lubya’s help and the latter immediately sent a group of men to assist them, but Saffuriyya fell before they arrived,” said Abu Ali Azzam.^¹⁶⁹ Abu Ali was active in the popular committee in Baalbek refugee camp^¹⁷⁰ in Lebanon but now lives with his family in Aarhus, Denmark. “This worried the people of Lubya tremendously for they felt that their turn was next. Sami 'Issa was with those who went to help Saffuriyya. When he came back he told me: 'Ahmad, go to your father and tell him to leave for Sha’b.’”
Fayad Abbas^¹⁷¹ was thirty years old at the time of the attacks on Lubya in 1948 and actively participated in the defence of the village. He did not have many stories to tell, not wanting to relive the bitter memories of the past. Fayad lost five young sons in the course of the struggle for Palestine in the modern revolution. For him, neither Denmark nor any other country can ever replace Lubya. Nevertheless, the clashes of 1948 were still vivid in his memory, even after forty-seven years of exile.
“I was a soldier in the British Army from 1946 to 1948, when it was preparing to leave Palestine and the Jews launched their war against us. Actually Lubya was the last village to be defeated in the region. Tiberias, Jaffa, and Saffuriyya all fell before it. I still remember how we took the bus to go and help Saffuriyya after we heard news that the Jews were besieging it. When we arrived we learned that the village had already fallen, so we returned to Lubya.”
Men, women and children banded together to defend the village. “Even the women carried water to the fighters while singing,” said Abu Khalil. “The boys collected empty bullet shells from the battlefield.” “We were happy when we were helping the revolutionaries,” recalled Amina Ali Ismael. “My husband, Abu Ahmad, sometimes sent me over to them with water and food. The Lubyans also helped their neighbours in al-Shajara, but the Arab Salvation Army (ASA) ordered a truce. When the Jews came back to occupy al-Shajara, the Arab Army did nothing to help its defenders. Instead, they directed their fire at al-Afouli. Three days later, they asked us to evacuate the village and Abu Dhais offered his own cars to help those who wanted to leave.”

Seeking assistance
As they had done during the Great Revolt in the 1930s, Lubyans sent delegations to seek assistance from neighbouring Arab governments. “The Palestinians sent a delegation from Lubya and other cities to Jordan to consult with King Abdullah in the year 1948,” said Isam. “The result of the meeting was negative. I think that there was a conspiracy to give the land to the Jews.”
“I remember that Sa’id Shami al-Sharkasi came to my father’s madafi (guest house) one day and asked his advice about the situation and what to do about it,” said Ibrahim Shihabi. “My father answered, ‘You are still the leader of your people, and I cannot even convince my brothers of anything. Anyway, go to King Abdullah (of Jordan) and ask his advice. He is the leader of the Arab Army’. When he returned from his trip to Jordan, he told my father that the King had told him to be calm and rational; however, if the Jews attack, they should defend themselves and not leave their land at all, because the Jews want the land without its people.”
According to Abu Bassam, “those who met with King Abdullah in February or March 1948 are only two, Hassan Abu Dhais and Kamel al-Tabari. I don’t know if there were others who joined the delegation from Tiberias. Kamel al-Tabari went to ask for support for Lubya and Tiberias. As I remember, the King told them to wait until the 15 May when the Arab Army was scheduled to arrive.”
Residents of Lubya also traveled to Damascus to seek assistance from the Syria government. Ibrahim Shihabi mentioned that his “father met with Jamil Mardam, then Syrian Minister of Defence, and asked him for weapons. Jamil hit the table and exclaimed: ‘Hey, you table, bring him some weapons. From where should I bring you weapons?’ Then my father asked him to send a well-qualified officer to help them, but the answer came also in the negative. ‘Even this, I cannot afford to do,’ the Minister said.”
Abu Bassam was with the delegation who met with Adeeb Shishakli who later became president of Syria. “There were four of us, Mustafa Abu Dhais, my uncle Hassan Abu Dhais, Mahmoud al-Hamaidi and myself,” he said. “We asked Adeeb to give us bullets, not men or weapons, but his answer was a categorical no. He said that he was stationed in the village of Safsaf near Safad, and that if the need arose, he could be in Lubya in two hours.”
“When the big battle started, Mustafa went to al-Maghar to see Abdu al-‘Aydi and met Adeeb Shishakli there. Mustafa asked Shishakli: ‘You said you would be in Lubya in two hours if need be, and the battle has been going on now for three days. Why didn’t you move? We now forbid you to come to Lubya.’ When Adeeb asked who would forbid him, Mustafa answered angrily by slashing his face.”
The same story was told by Abu Khalil who had heard it directly from a woman who witnessed the event. “Um Muhammad (Fatima Hlaihil) said that Mustafa took his pistol and wanted to shoot Adeeb, but Akram Haurani [who became a high-ranking official in the Ba’ath party] stood between them and prevented the incident from going further.” When Shishlaki later became president of Syria in the 1950s, Mustafa Abu Dhais was put in prison.^¹⁷²
The last battle
For Lubyans the ‘D-Days’ of their expulsion was 18-21 July 1948. Jewish forces entered the village on 21 July after three days of continuous bombardment. It was the ninth day of Ramadan. neighbouring towns and villages, including Tiberias, Nazareth and Saffuriyya had already fallen to Jewish forces.
“In the second battle of 1948 on 15 July, Nazareth and Saffuriyya fell,” said Ahmad Okla, “and as the Arab army retreated, the Jewish army turned towards Lubya bombing it heavily. We had no more ammunication and the balance was totally against us. We evacuated the village, and when the enemy entered Lubya on Saturday 18 July 1948, they had only the elderly men left to kill.”
“After the cities and villages fell one after the other,” said Hashim [last name], “the Arab army asked the Lubyans to leave for two weeks.” Fayad Abbas, who was among those who went to assist the neighbouring village of Saffuriyya, recalled that “on the way back we saw villagers from Tur’an, Kufr Kanna, al-Mashhad, and al-Raini leaving their villages. Then the battle around Lubya began.”
(For a written account from Jewish forces see Appendix #).
Nahom Abbo told me that Jewish forces had “contacted the Lubyans by wireless from Tiberias, and said that they should give up, but the answer was negative. They continued fighting, and I began to see inhabitants fleeing from Lubya to [the nearby village of ] Nimrin. We were ordered not to stop the retreat, otherwise the battle might have been more fierce.”
“It was Ramadan and we were fasting,” said Fayad. “They tried to occupy Lubya by attacking it from the north and south simultaneously, but we succeeded in capturing the military convoy that arrived from Tiberias and thought that the battle was over. Then one of the villagers, Mufaddi Mahmoud, told us that the Jews were trying to occupy the village from the south, so we quickly shifted our positions and mounted a defence of the village from the south.”
Yousef Issa had similar recollections of the battle. He was posted on another side of the village. “The battle began about 2 a.m. on the first day of Ramadan, but our people were ready for it. The civil guard was surrounding the village from all sides. We expected the attack to start from the south, from the direction of the al-Shajara settlement. Although the attack began from the east, from the direction of Tiberias, the main force in fact was preparing to attack the village from the south.”
“Three Land Rovers and a lorry arrived from the direction of Tiberias-Bouria but were destroyed by the ‘Ajayni who were guarding the eastern side of the village at Jablat al-’Oni. When the military convoy reached al-Sa’d point to the west of Bayyarit al-Khan, they destroyed it and killed its driver. One of the Jewish attackers threw a hand grenade, but Muhammad Dawwas, who was trained by the border police, caught it and threw it back at them. One of their trucks was filled with sand.”
“At 10 a.m., while the defenders were busy fighting on the eastern side of the village, Mufaddi Mahmoud, from the Samallout tribe, arrived on horseback and announced that Lubya was being attacked from the north. The fighters who were stationed elsewhere in the village quickly moved towards the northern area where the new front had opened. Some went to support the defenders already there, while others proceeded to surround the Jewish attackers from the rear, from the direction of Kufr Sabt and al-Shajara.”
Abu Khalil witnessed the same incident. “I was standing beside Mustafa Abu Dhais, the son of the za’eem (leader) Abu Dhais when Jamal Mufaddi Muhammad and Ahmad Salah came crying and asked for Mustafa’s help because the southern part of Lubya had already been attacked, the house of Hassan al-Abid occupied and many men were dead,” he said. “Without hesitation, Mustafa responded: ‘yalla shabab, yalla ikhwiti ‘al hara al-kibliyyi’ (let’s go men, let’s go my brothers, be ready to go to the southern neighbourhood).”
“The Jewish fighters had already reached the borders of the village, when one of our guards heard voices coming from their direction and shouted: ‘Who is there?’ The answer came, ‘Muhammad’, but the accent was clearly Jewish, for they could not pronounce the letter ‘H’ in Arabic. This is when the shooting began and the plan to take the village by surprise was foiled.”
“One of the attackers had a wireless phone, so the villagers arrested him and tried to obtain from him information about the attack. Najib Musleh took the wireless and contacted the Jewish leadership. After introducing himself as a fighter from Lubya, he defiantly said to the Jewish commander: ‘You can send more troops to Lubya, for those you already sent were wiped out.’ The answer from the other side was: ‘You Lubyans are crazy,’ followed by a series of curses.”
“In the meantime, a group of attackers had occupied the two-story house of Hassan al-Abid, which stood on the edge of the village. Hassan was killed in front of his house while he was defending it. The Jewish attackers put an automatic gun on a second floor window and shot from there at the villagers. They remained there for the entire day, which followed the night of the battle and retreated under cover of darkness.”
According to Yousef Issa, Lubyans did not shoot back because “the house was isolated from the rest of the village and stood in the middle of a clearing. However, the armoured vehicle that was taken by the villagers after they killed its driver was given as a present to the Arab Army. Abu Tal’at succeeded in taking seven guns from the dead attackers, one of whom was a woman. Other Lubyans collected the weapons left on the battlefield.”
According to Nasir 'Atwani, “The man who drove the armored tank we had captured from the Jewish army was Ahmad Hauran. When the Salvation Army came to take the tank a dispute erupted between two Iraqi soldiers. One of them shot at the other, but the bullet missed and struck a Bedouin who lived in Lubya, whose name I believe was Salim al-Mahmoud.”
The tank is still in the military museum in Damascus and the caption underneath it mentions that it was a present from the people of Lubya. In 1964 Khalid Sa'id [check earlier] visited Damascus. “I still have the photo infront of the lorry in 1964 with the written words in Arabic: 'Hadiyyi Min Shabab Lubya al-Bawasil Ila al-Jaish al-Arabi al-Souri (A present from the brave men of Lubya to the Syrian Arab army').”
I wanted Izra Lavi, one of the Jewish officers who participated in the attack, to tell me concretely what happened from his side at the front. It was Izra Lavi and his men who had entered the house of Hassan al-Abid. “I led sixty soldiers and was ordered to occupy Lubya with this attacking company. We went from Tiberias to Yibnail, then to Yamma and then passed through Kufr Kama. Before we arrived at al-Shajara, we got out of the cars. I was wounded at the start of the battle.”
“There was a two-story building on the outskirts of Lubya, and in the plan they gave me, it said that an airplane and artillery would participate in the battle, but there were neither planes nor artillery. Another thirty soldiers were to assist us. These were situated to my right. This supporting platoon, the group of thirty men, began firing at the Lubyans to provide cover so that we could enter the village and prevent any help from arriving from other villages.”
“When we arrived at the village outskirts, I said to my soldiers: ‘I want to find out where I am going.’ So I entered the two-storey house [of Hassan al-Abid] and went up to the second floor. It was there that I was shot. There were those who said that our own protection force shot me because they had suddenly seen a man on the roof. I was shot in the morning. When I was shot, I fell down and realised that I was paralysed. I gave orders to evacuate me and for my deputy to take over the leadership of the company.”
“In the morning the Lubyans began the counterattack. I was out of the battlefield but I didn’t lose consciousness. Every time they shot at us I held my pistol up so that my soldiers would not leave me on the battlefield. They took me to the hospital, because my wound was deep, and an operation was carried out. They opened my stomach and cut out about a metre of my bowels. I was concerned about myself and I didn’t follow the news directly.”
Issa Lubani was another Lubyan who participated and was wounded in the war. “I stayed with the few who remained to the end in Mujaydil. Sami, from the Fahoum family, was responsible for us until the end of the war. I still have nightmares about those with me who died. Every time I remember them, Yousef, 'Awad, I weep. I saw them perish one by one. I told my friend Hamdoun that I was smelling the scent of death through the drops of rain. The distance between us and the Jews was 150 metres.”
“On that same day Hamdoun died. He woke up in the morning with a bullet in his front. I saw this again in a nightmare three weeks ago. Now I am writing a story with the name bloody wedding (Urs al-Dam). I remember the poet 'Abd al-Rahim Hammoud. He was with us in Nazareth in 1948. Someone came and asked for help (faz’a) for al-Shajara. Hammoud went to help, but was killed. I should have been with him. I don’t know why I delayed. He used to sit with Saliba Khamis in the Café in Nazareth.”
Neighbouring villages also sent men to help defend Lubya but it was already too late. “During the war we sent support to Lubya,” said Abu ‘Ajaj from the village of Tur'an. “There was no doubt that the Lubyans fought bravely. The museum at the crossroads [Lubya lies on a crossroad between Tiberias and Haifa (east-west), and Afula and Nazareth (south-north which is now named Golani Junction] was even named by the military commander Golani who died in the battle of Lubya. The plot of land on which the museum was erected was confiscated from our village.”^¹⁷³
“Different groups arrived from the surrounding villages to assist Lubya,” said Abu Ali. “From Saffuriyya, Abu Mahmoud al-Saffouri arrived with 15 men, from ‘Aylabun a group arrived with the village priest, as did fighters from Hittin and Tur’an, but it was too late, the battle was already over. The Red Cross and other organizations then came to negotiate the retrieval of the bodies of the dead Jewish soldiers, but the Lubyans refused to agree to a deal, especially because they had been attacked in their own home town.” .
Others who remained inside the village recalled what it was like to be under attack. Amina Ali Ismael’s memory of past events, the people killed in the raid, including her uncle, and all the places and countries she travelled through while in exile, was recounted by her as if she was reading from a book. “The airplane dropped a barrel filled with gas-like material on our house. My cousin’s son, Younis Rashid Zu’aitir, and Mufaddi Hassan Taha, were killed. Another similar raid on the Okla house killed Ali al-Haurani and his son Subhi. Subhi had just returned home and was calling Fatima and Ali when the bomb fell nearby, killing him. There were no doctors at that time in Lubya, so they drove the father, Ali, to the Nazareth hospital but he died on the way there and was buried near his son.”
“We were in the fields one night, where we slept during the harvest season, when I heard shooting in the village. The next morning we saw the dead bodies of two Jews lying on the land of 'Awad Ahmad, one of which was that of a woman. A priest came to take the bodies out but the villagers refused to hand them over. Twelve men from the Shihabi clan had been killed defending their houses.”
Lubyans also remembered the story of Harbi al-'Ammori, a ninety-year-old handicapped woman, and Salem al-Shabkoni, who was about eighty. Both were killed after Haganah forces entered the village. When I asked Nahom Abbo about these atrocities he totally denied that Jewish forces were responsible for the murder of the two elderly civilians. “I don’t think that a soldier would commit such an act,” Nahom told me. “After we captured Lubya, we stayed in it one day and then left. We handed the village over to the militia.” Lubyans who returned to the village a few days after the final battle had taken place saw the remains of Harbi and Salem at the entrance of the cave of Faraj al-Mas’oud.
“Every day they attacked the area with mortars,” recalled Um Isam. “We descended to the forest because our house was on higher ground. People began to say: ‘The teacher (al-Ustath) and his sons have been killed.’ I asked Abu Isam to send me to my father’s house. My son Hisham was hidden in a cloth box (shakaban). Another woman, by mistake, carried him away. I nearly lost my mind, I ran out in the fields without shoes looking for him. We stayed in the valley until the morning.”
“My husband’s sister was married to my cousin Sheikh Naif al-Tabari. We ran together in the valley until we reached Tiberias. A women, who was just giving birth to a child, was shot dead by Jewish troops. The airplanes were hitting the city. My mother refused to let me go back to Lubya. She begged me to move to Nazareth. Nevertheless, I returned to Lubya. The English forces took me there. Lubya was attacked from all directions. The Shahabi family lost most in the attack. They were buried in a cave. Priests and the Red Cross interfered to receive the dead Jews, but Lubyans refused.”
(For a list of Lubyans killed during the 1948 war see Appendix #)
Lubyans spoke about the high price they paid in the battle to defend their village. According to Fayad Abbas, “more than 20 men were killed defending our village. The Arab Salvation Army came to our aid, but actually did nothing.” “The price was heavy,” said Abu Bassam. “Sixteen of our defenders were killed and the enemy losses were even higher.”
“The exact number of dead on the Jewish side was not known, but there were at least those who couldn’t retreat with the others and were left lying in the fields. They were found with chains on them, which indicated that there was an attempt to pull them out of the area.” Abu Majid insisted that he personally saw fifty-two dead bodies of members of the Jewish attacking forces in his own field alone.
When I asked Izra about the credibility of the official Israeli version of events around 1948 – that the Arabs ordered Palestinians to leave their homes – he answered: “Had there been no such orders, I would say that only the foreign Arabs would have left, not the locals. Their leaders promised them that they would return within a week. I also heard that they began to talk about distributing Jewish houses among them. I was told that by a Palestinian named Mu’in who still lives in Nazareth.” Izra denied categorically that Ben Gurion orchestrated the expulsion of Palestinians from their villages.
Official documents released from Israeli archives over the past two decades, however, provide evidence of various plans and orders to expel Palestinians from areas designated as the Jewish state under the 1947 UN partition resolution, especially during the second half of the war. Ester Lavi nonetheless disputed claims that Jewish forces expelled Palestinians during the war. “This is a lie. It is not true,” she said. “When I met the Arab [which Arab] who came here from Jordan he gave me a newsletter in which Yosef Nachmani wrote about taking land from the Arabs. I phoned his daughter and asked her about what her father said. She denied it categorically.”
The role of the ASA
Lubyans also spoke about the relations with the Arab Salvation Army. “When the Jews occupied part of Arab al-Shajara, we attacked the settlement,” said Ahmad Okla. “We almost defeated them, but then a truce was signed and the Arab Salvation Army could not hold that area we have liberated from al-Shajara.”
Abu Ali had similar recollections. “Once, after part of the Jewish settlement of al-Shajara had been occupied, he ordered his soldiers to shell a bus that had stopped near it. However, when three cars loaded with weapons arrived at the settlement, he refused to fire at them, claiming that he had received no orders to that effect. I saw the burning bus with my own eyes while I was in the fields of Hassan al-Thyab.”

“In the ensuing battle, three men from Lubya were killed: Ahmad Gubaish, Abid al-Latif Ibrahim Rashdan and a third one. A dispute erupted as a result between the Arab Army and the people of Lubya. But an hour later, the Jewish forces began shelling the area where some soldiers from the ASA were stationed, and I later heard from the elders that an exploding shell killed six of them. The battle ended with the defeat of the Arab Army and the victory of the Jews, and soon after, the ASA leadership informed the inhabitants of Lubya that they would have to leave for the nearby village of Sha’b.”

Many of those I interviewed spoke about Jewish infiltration of the Arab Salvation Army (ASA). Ibrahim Shihabi remembered “two Iraqi officers in the village, ‘Amir and Madlul Beik. I once heard the latter speak Hebrew in the wireless and told my father,” said Ibrahim. “He told me that I understood nothing. Madlul was only listening to the Jews through the wireless. When my father protested to ‘Amir Beik about the way he was handling the al-Shajara situation and asked him to allow the Lubyans to do the job instead of him, his answer was, ‘Abu Nayif, take care of your own children, I will say no more than that.’ A Sudanese volunteer also protested against the way the officer in charge of the bombardment was dealing with al-Shajara and was killed in front of my own eyes.”

Nahom Abbo, however, insisted that Jewish forces “always had reliable sources on the other side. It is not a secret. I myself got information from them. For example, once the Arab informants told my brother that the revolutionary Arabs wanted to kill me. There were spies who worked for us. Some were captured, others were not. We also had spies among us working for the enemy, but very few, not as many as the Arabs, but I must say that I had no informants in Lubya.” I did not find any concrete evidence either of informants from Lubya.
The road to exile
The fall of Tiberias, Saffuriyya, and Nazareth to Jewish forces, and the evacuation of Arab Salvation Army from its headquarters in Tur’an left Lubya isolated among fallen towns and villages. Down to the last minute there was heated debate among Lubyans on how to deal with the crisis. Eventually, however, the decision of the majority was to let the women and children move to safe areas in nearby villages in the north, and let the men continue to fight regardless of the consequences.
The attacks on the village itself combined with news and rumors of atrocities committed by Jewish forces elsewhere in the country led to panic and chaos among the Arab population across the country. This included Lubya. “The villagers became very afraid when on 10 June 1948 news of massacres in the Nasir al-Din and Safad districts reached Lubya, compounding the already alarming news of the Dayr Yasin massacre,” said Yousef al-Yousef.
“A decision was taken to evacuate women and children out of the village. We were near the cemetery when I saw enemy vehicles with my own eyes and counted thirteen of them. I will never forget that day in my life. We were evacuated to ‘Arrabit al-Battof and stayed with a friend of my grandfather’s there for two nights, until my father arrived and took us back to Lubya. After the fall of Lubya, we went to live in Kufr ‘Anan.”

The majority of the villagers headed towards the north. Even as some of the villagers began fleeing the fighting around the village, others were still calling upon them to stay. Ibrahim Shihabi remembered his father, mukhtar Yihya al-Shihabi, shouting: “Khiyani, Khiyani (Treason, Treason).” He also recalled that one of the followers of Abu Ibrahim al-Sagheer, a revolutionary commander loyal to Haj Amin al-Husayni, told the villagers that the ASA would retreat and eventually allow the villagers to return.

But it was too late to stop the exodus. Mukhtar Yihya started shooting to prevent people from leaving, but his brothers stopped him asking him not to put on their shoulders the burden of the blood of their cousins in case some one would be killed. “My father was against leaving the village and fired shots in the air to prevent the people from doing so,” said Ibrahim. “When we arrived in Rmaish, [a village in Lebanon] the Red Cross asked my father to take charge of the refugees, but he refused. When we arrived later in Hauran, my father became seriously ill for two months because of the tragedy.”
“My father, my brothers, my uncle Diab and my three sisters and I left to al-Maghar, then to Sha’b, to Suhmata, to Dayr al-Kasi, and at last to Bint Imjbail in Lebanon,” said Ali. “We stayed there for two months until the Lebanese Army arrived and drove us to al-Kar’oon. Soon after, the Lebanese police moved us to ‘Anjar, and from there to the Baalbek refugee camp.” When all the cities and villages around us fell,” said Fayad, “we left for Bint Imjbail in Lebanon, then to Baalbek.”
Zahra Ibrahim Khalil, Abu Tal'at's wife, was among other Lubyans who left in search of safe refuge following the fall of Nazareth and Saffuriyya to Jewish forces. “We left for Nimrin and we found that there was no one there, its inhabitants having left before we did so we slept in the nearby forest. In the morning my husband said that he wanted to return to Lubya to collect his father, and I asked to accompany him. There was no one left in the village, so I took from our house honey, sugar and flour and all the money we had left, which was 150 to 200 liras, as well as a pistol and two guns.”
“We lived for three or four months in a war situation with airplanes attacking us. Whenever one appeared, Fatima Diab used to shout, ‘The airplanes, the airplanes!’ We used to run to the caves to protect ourselves. Bullets were streaming past us when I left al-Za’atra cave with Salman Ayid’s wife. I carried two of my sons, Izzat and Tal’at, and my husband carried Rif’at.”
“Then we heard that there was a cease-fire, so the men stayed in the village while the women and children left for neighbouring villages. We went first to Nimrin, then to al-Mahgar where we stayed for three days. We returned to our village after a cease-fire agreement was reached. One month later, the war started again, and this time we left the village for good. My husband used to buy oil, sugar and rice. I asked him to leave a few liras for us in the house, but he refused. He was preparing for a long siege of the village.”
“I went to the fields only once, because my husband used to prevent me from going out there. I also knew that he sometimes looked at other girls (kanat ‘ainai la-barra).” This evoked a slight smile on Abu Tal'at's face. “On that very day my aunt Nasra al-Khalil was shot dead by the Jews and Hajji Zahra and Zakiya dug a hole in the ground and buried her. We were all busy avoiding the ravages of war. No one had any time for anything else. After we left Lubya, we slept another night in al-Maghar in the house of Abdu al-Aiydi who was originally from Lubya. At night, however, we heard airplanes, and we all went out and slept in the street.”
“We were thirty families in all when we left Lubya,” said Abu Muhammad Kilani. “During the war my father chose to stay in Lubya and still wanted to stay even after everyone else left. Our uncle came over one day and told us that there was no one left in Lubya, but my father told him: ‘I want to die here. I don’t want to leave. Where should I go? I have no place else to go to. I will not become a beggar in another country.’ There were only my four sisters and myself, so the family convinced my father to leave after everyone else did.”
Mustafa al-Said (Abu Khalid) was born in 1920. He found refuge first in Baalbek refugee camp and later in Burj al-Barajni in Lebanon since his expulsion from Lubya in 1948. Abu Khaled was a young boy when he left with his mother, first to the neighbouring village of Tur’an, and then to Lebanon. In Tur’an he remembered that a Jewish officer gathered the whole village and began asking them if they had seen among them any one from Lubya. The mukhtar of Tur’an answered: ‘Let the curse fall on Lubyans. All of them left to Turkey now.’
Then the Jewish officer put his trembling hand on his pistol and shouted: ‘Oh, if I had twenty of them in front of me now.’ Khalid returned to his mother and told her what he had heard. They decided to leave quickly and follow the rest of the family to evade the revenge of the Jewish forces. The same episode repeated itself in Dayr Hanna when it capitulated. In both villages the mukhtar lied to protect Lubyans who were hiding among them. The protection provided by the people of Tur’an stemmed from both the blood relationship with their daughters who were married with Lubyans, and out of respect to Lubyans who fought bravely against the Jewish forces.
“I was born in 1942, but I still remember the day when we left Lubya,” said Subhiyya Muhsen Gouda (Um al-‘Abid) who is now living in Dayr Hanna. Subhiyya, who is the sister of Abu Sameeh, accompanied me on many visits to Lubya. The hardships of life after 1948 and the responsibility of taking care of 12 children never seemed to prevent her from smiling. Unlike other women of the village, her character is strong, confident and not afraid of any thing concerning her memory of the past, her personal life, her attack on Mustafa Abu Dhais when he returned to Dayr Hanna and refused to sell them the plot of land that he had taken from the Israeli authorities as an exchange for his land in Lubya. Actually she knew more than the old people about all the corners and alleys of her neighbourhood (hara) where she lived until 1948.
“I was very hungry and when I asked a woman in Nimrin, a nearby village, to give me bread, she refused. We continued our way to ‘‘Aylabun where my mother baked for us loaves of bread on a piece of corroded metal. We arrived in Dayr Hanna and slept in a cottage, then moved to another village where we stayed for three years. We rented one room for seven people. When my brothers started working, we were able to build an additional room. I still remember how the water penetrated through the roof. When it rained it sounded as if a herd of goats was running on the roof.” [next chapter]
Abdu al-‘Aydi was well known in al-Maghar village as one of the richest people in the area. He ended up in Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria borrowing packets of cigarettes from the shops in the camp because he was unable to pay for them. “My husband took us to Wadi Sallama [the famous wadi that most of the Lubyans took on their way to Lebanon] where we stayed another day. We had a horse and a donkey with us. All the people were marching towards the north. We only had 2 kilograms of flour with us, and I don’t remember how I managed to make bread out of that.”
“We then proceeded to Hurfaish, al-Bukai’a and Sa’sa’ [three Palestinian villages which were also demolished] and slept one night in each. They were beautiful villages with green countryside and many olive trees. The next day we again moved from Hurfaish to Aitharoun where we stayed for seven days. Our neighbours, Farah Mas’oud’s family, told us that our relatives were in Bint Imjbail in south Lebanon. Thousands of people slept in the open under the olive and fig trees. We were lucky to find a fig tree for ourselves to sleep under. We used to buy a tank of water for two piasters, and a few potatoes and a piece of meat cost one shilling. We stayed ten to twelve days in this situation until they distributed us among different refugee camps.”
Abu Majid who had tried to return to the village was subsequently forced to retreat to Nimrin. “The tanks entered Lubya under the cover of heavy shooting and we had to leave Nimrin after we heard the bombardment getting closer to us. On the third day the Jews entered Nimrin and I left to al-Maghar where I was told to meet up with the people from Lubya, so I gave the sheep to Nabooh and asked him to deliver it to my uncle S’ood. We ate a little mujaddara (lentils) and left after being told that the Arab Salvation Army (Jaish al-Inkath) was taking the guns away from the villagers. They took the gun of Sheikh Suleiman al-‘Abid which he had bought for 100 liras.”
“In al-Rami village, we met Abu Tal’at who had succeeded in taking four new Shiki guns from the Jewish force and we sold one of them for twelve liras. To avoid meeting up with the Arab Army, we side stepped the main roads and took a path through the olive orchards. We walked until we reached a village named Sa’sa’ and from there we joined people on their way to Yaroun on the Lebanese border. We stayed there for about a month and then moved to Bint Imjbail in Lebanon, from where the army took the refugees and distributed them to different areas of the country (al-Kar’oon, ‘Anjar, Baalbek). Others chose to continue on to Damascus.”
“I had with me 100 liras, given to me by the British Police when I finished my work with them. After some hesitation, I sold my gun for 35 liras. I then met up with Ali al-‘Ashour and continued our way to Nabatiyya where we slept in a deserted mosque, without doors or carpets. My friend then proposed that we go and see a film, but I refused thinking it a crazy idea in such a situation.”
“The next day we left for al-Qunaitra in the Golan Heights, and on our way towards Damascus, the Syrian police stopped us. They proceeded to search us in a strange way. We had to raise our arms up and stick our tongue out so the policeman could see if there was a stamp under our arm and our tongue. They were acting on the assumption that the presence of a stamp meant that we were secretly working for the Jewish forces and that the stamp was a sign of identification.”
“In Damascus, while I was walking in Souk al-Hamidiyya, I accidentally met with Fawaz al-‘Atroush, from Tiberias, who told me the whereabouts of the rest of my family. Once I joined them, I was told about the imprisonment of my brother ‘Arif and his friend in a Lebanese prison (Sijn al-Ramil) in Beirut, because they had found with them a pistol and some ammunition. The judge sentenced them to two months in prison. After their release, Sidki al-Tabari met them in Beirut and helped them to come to Damascus. Because of this accidental meeting in Souk al-Hamidiyya, I changed my plans to continue to Jordan and stayed in Syria, where I still reside. That is the story of my exodus from Palestine.”
The stories of the exodus are still remembered in the most tiny details, especially when retold by women. “We stayed in Wadi Salama for five days and then moved to al-Maghar where airplanes still bombed the village,” recalled Amina Ali Ismael. “We then moved on to al-Jarmak, al-Bukai’a where we stayed for six days, then to Rmaish where a Lebanese border checkpoint was located. We asked for a pot of tea and they charged us five kirsh for it.”
Unlike others who fled north, Nayif Hassan left first to Egypt with the British forces and then back to Amman. He only discovered later on where his family had ended up. “On 15 May 1948, the British started their retreat from Palestine. I, myself, and three other Arabs, two from Lubya and one from Tur’an, Abid Aziz ‘Adawi, accompanied the British officers to Port Sa’id in Egypt via Hebron, Beer al-Sabi’, and al-’Areesh, and stayed there for one month before returning to Jordan,” said Nayif. “On our way back, we took a route through Aqaba because the Jews were already occupying parts of Jerusalem and Beer al-Sabi’. Once back home, they gave us some money (^mukafa’at^{) in the range of 400}^liras^{, and dismissed us. We later joined the Jordanian Arab Army as drivers, because they were in need of them at the time.”}
“I knew nothing about what had happened to my family and the refugees who came from Haifa to Port Sa’id knew nothing about Lubya. Then I heard from different people that my family had settled in Baalbek in Lebanon. So together with another Lubyan, Abu Taysir, I went to Lebanon, entering the country illegally. We saw the long lines of refugees moving in different directions and the old people who could not walk long distances dying on the way. In the end, however, we arrived in Baalbek and saw the catastrophic situation of the refugees there who even had no food to eat. So I stayed there three days then took the train back to Damascus, where I spent one night before returning to Jordan on foot. The whole trip was illegal. Later on, however, we only travelled the legal way.”

Trying to return

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