Kabul, Israel

Kabul is a Muslim Arab village situated in the western Lower Galilee.[1][2] It lies about 15 minutes by car from Acre and two to three kilometers east of Route 70.[2] The official government list titled “List of Arab Localities in Israel before 1967” gives its name as כַאּבּול in Hebrew, كابول in Arabic, and Kabul in Latin script.[6]

Kabul has a local council.[5] The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics reported a 2022 population density of approximately 2,010 people per square kilometer, calculated using the locality's area of jurisdiction.[4]

Kabul is identified with the ancient city of Cabul (Hebrew: כָּבוּל), situated in Western Galilee, southeast of Acre, within the territory assigned to the tribe of Asher in Joshua 19:27.[3] Its area may also have formed the broader “land of Cabul,” associated with the twenty Galilean cities that Solomon gave to Hiram, king of Tyre.[3][7]

The biblical accounts appear to differ: 1 Kings describes Solomon giving the cities to Hiram, while 2 Chronicles 8:2 states that Solomon built and settled Israelites in them.[3] Various explanations have been proposed. One possibility is that Cabul and its vicinity formed a border region between the Land of Israel and Phoenician Acre; by the Second Temple period, Cabul lay on the boundary of Galilee and Ptolemais-Acre.[3]

Josephus described the locality as “the village of Chabolo situated in the confines of Ptolemais.” He also interpreted “Cabul” as Phoenician for “what does not please,” although that interpretation has been questioned.[7] Cestius Gallus attacked Cabul in 66 C.E., and Josephus used it for a time as his headquarters in Galilee in 67 C.E.[3]

Cabul was a site of active Jewish communal life during the rabbinic era. Judah and Hillel, sons of Rabbi Gamaliel III, were received there with great honor and visited a local bath.[3] The town served as the seat of Rabbi Zakkai and was known for abundant wine and oil, a synagogue, and public baths.[3] Following the fall of Jerusalem, priests of the Shecaniah family settled in Cabul, continuing a Jewish presence in the Galilee.[3]

Local tradition, reported in 2020 without supporting historical documentation, holds that a Jewish community lived in Kabul for more than a thousand years, until the 17th century.[2] The same tradition identifies graves in the village with the prophet Micah and the medieval Spanish Jewish poets and scholars Abraham ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, and Solomon ibn Gabirol. These attributions are traditions rather than established historical burial identifications.[2]

During the Crusader era, Cabul served as the seat of a seigniory known in Latin as Cabor within the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.[3] Archaeological remains from the Middle Bronze Age and the Hellenistic and Roman periods have been found at the present-day village, documenting activity or settlement there during several distinct historical eras.[3]

A September 1957 memorandum prepared for the American Jewish Committee by James Marshall reported that Kabul had a total population of 1,500, including approximately 750 people displaced from the nearby village of Damun during the 1948 fighting.[8] Marshall wrote that the Damun residents he interviewed said the military had instructed them to leave, but he could not determine whether they meant Israeli or Arab forces.[8]

During his June 1957 visit, Marshall observed a family of five from Damun living in a single room that he described as “10 X 10.”[8] The family had no water and had to purchase it from the village, while its former land in Damun lay approximately a quarter of a mile away.[8] Marshall quoted one former resident pointing toward his farm: “There, I can see it, but I can't go back and farm.”[8]

Israel Central Bureau of Statistics records trace Kabul's population growth across several decades. The village had approximately 1,500 residents in 1955, 1,900 in 1961, 3,100 in 1972, 4,800 in 1983, and 7,100 in 1995.[4] Its population reached 11,900 in 2008, 14,500 in 2021, and 14,600 in 2022.[4]

A government spreadsheet separately gave Kabul's population as 14,243.04 at the beginning of 2021. For January through November, it recorded a natural increase of 185, an internal-migration balance of 9, and an international-migration balance of -1.[9] Earlier sources recorded 2,570 residents in 1968,[1] while a 2020 report estimated the population at nearly 15,000.[2]

A 2020 account described Kabul as home to many academics and professionals, including teachers, social workers, lawyers, accountants, and physicians. It reported that residents traveled daily to work in courts, hospitals, factories, and major companies in the surrounding region.[2]

Kabul is a Muslim village whose cultural landscape also includes traditions connecting local sites with biblical and medieval Jewish figures.[2] These traditions form part of the village's contemporary identity, although the reported burial identifications are not historically verified.[2]

Sites in Kabul are locally revered as the graves of the prophet Micah and the Jewish poets and scholars Abraham ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, and Solomon ibn Gabirol.[2] These identifications are matters of local tradition rather than established historical fact.[2]

The present-day village has also yielded Middle Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman remains.[3] Historical accounts record that rabbinic-era Cabul had a synagogue and public baths, although the cited source does not state that those particular structures survive.[3]

A local council election held in November 1995 was later annulled by Haifa District Court Judge Haim Pizem. The court found that voters had been influenced through benefits, including the payment or forgiveness of municipal debts in exchange for votes. New elections were ordered, and the elected council head was required to pay legal costs.[5]

A December 2020 investigation described a violent feud between the Riyan and Akrieh families. Interviewees differed over whether it had begun two or three years earlier with a quarrel among youths inside or near a school, while others could not recall its cause. The conflict escalated in May 2020 despite attempts to arrange a truce.[2] Police blocked two routes connecting the families' neighborhoods with earthworks, rocks, and a small fence; a concrete barricade stood near sites locally identified with Judah Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol, and Micah.[2]

In August 2022, a fight broke out between local residents and Jews who had come to pray at revered graves. Police said one Arab man was lightly injured and that an investigation was opened.[10] In October 2024, Kabul resident Youssef Taha, 48, a father of four, was shot and killed, and another man was lightly injured. Police described the suspected background as criminal and said the circumstances were under investigation; the report called it Kabul's first killing of that year.[11]