Eilabun

Eilabun sits in the eastern Lower Galilee, roughly eleven miles from Nazareth, and serves as a local council within Israel's Northern District.[1][5] The village lies west of the Sea of Galilee, near the Jewish community of Ramat Arbel.[6] Eilabun received local-council status in the 1970s.[1]

Historical sources and archaeological finds indicate that Eilabun was a Jewish settlement during the Roman period.[3] Sources associate the village with the priestly course of Hakotz, while architectural fragments previously identified at the site point to the presence of an ancient synagogue.[3]

In October 2017, a family digging in its backyard uncovered a hole leading into a network of underground caves buried approximately three meters beneath accumulated dirt and silt.[5] Antiquities Authority inspectors later detected signs of illegal excavation during a routine inspection. A search conducted with police led to the detention of two residents, who admitted the allegations and were released on bail.[3] Looters had removed valuable material and damaged cave walls, leaving broken pottery shards.[5]

At the end of October 1948, during Operation Hiram in the War of Independence, Israeli troops from the Golani Brigade captured Eilabun, which at that time had approximately 800 Christian residents.[4] According to the cited account, soldiers selected and shot 12 young men, then rounded up and expelled the remaining villagers northward toward Lebanon.[4] Historian Benny Morris, as quoted in that account, suggested that the killings followed the discovery of the mutilated bodies of two captured soldiers nearby and described the episode as "apparently related to a general vengefulness and a desire by local commanders to precipitate a civilian exodus."[4]

Among those expelled was the family of Nofajeh and Nofal Swaid, who made the journey to Lebanon with three young sons aged five, three, and one.[4] The Roman Catholic Church appears to have learned of the expulsion, after which pressure was brought on Israel's new government to reverse the decision.[4] The villagers were subsequently allowed to return but found the village stripped of livestock and belongings, with only the shells of their houses intact.[4] An Al-Ittihad newspaper headline dated August 27, 1954, and indexed by the National Library of Israel, read "منفيو عيلبون يعودون الى قريتهم" — "Eilabun's exiles return to their village."[1]

Hanna Swaid, born in 1955 to the expelled Swaid family, later served as Eilabun's mayor for ten years beginning in 1993 before becoming a Hadash member of the Knesset.[4] A Catholic and civil engineer with a PhD from the Technion, Swaid has emphasized reconciliation and peace while noting that every child in Eilabun knows what happened in 1948.[4]

Eilabun's population is predominantly Arab Christian, with a Muslim minority.[1][6] The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics counted 4,100 Christian residents in Eilabun in 2020, placing it among the ten Israeli localities with the largest Christian populations.[7] Government preliminary estimates put the total population at approximately 5,787 at the beginning of 2021 and 5,794 at the end of November that year.[2]

The opening of the Eilabun Interchange on Highway 65 in 2016 improved road access to the village, Highway 806, and surrounding communities. The project included two roundabouts, a 54-meter bridge, and a four-lane, 2.5-kilometer road section linking the Eilabun and Massad-Ravid interchanges.[8]

The underground complex discovered beneath a private property in 2017 is Eilabun's principal documented archaeological site. An ancient pit about three meters deep and four meters wide opened into an extensive underground space.[3] Antiquities Authority archaeologists estimated that the complex had served as an underground storeroom during the Roman period and was later used as a stable. Features and finds included notches carved into the walls, a large trough likely used for food or water, animal troughs, fragments of water basins, cooking pots, and storage vessels.[5][3]

Eilabun's high school was established by Protestant missionaries, and Arab Christian schools in the village have regularly ranked near the top of Israel's academic achievement standings.[4] Baptist preacher Sukri Mussa, after returning to the Holy Land in 1911, preached in Eilabun and nearby Turan and organized Bible studies. Participants initially met in private homes before Baptist churches were established in several Galilee locations, including Eilabun.[9]

A 2014 report described a more troubled picture for the village's primary and middle school: approximately 1,000 pupils in grades 1 through 9 were studying in an old, deteriorating building that had been in use since the 1940s. A newly constructed modern facility remained unoccupied, with a possible dispute between the local council head and the school principal raised as a reason for the delay.[10]

Eilabun is home to the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, an organization working in the housing-and-development field that was established in 2000.[11] The center has been noted alongside organizations operating in education, research, and civic and social change within Arab civil society in Israel.[11]

The killings and expulsion reported in Eilabun during October 1948 remain historically and politically sensitive. The detailed Times of Israel account relies on Benny Morris's historical work, while a 2022 Ynet opinion article, also drawing primarily on Morris, lists 12 people killed in Eilabun without giving an Eilabun-specific account of the circumstances.[4][12] Because both accounts ultimately rely on the same historian, the available sourcing does not provide independent corroboration of the casualty figure.

The National Library of Israel's brief entry mentions the displacement and subsequent return but gives no detailed account or specific date for the 1948 displacement and return.[1]