Kamel Yacoub picks me up from the roundabout north of Nasra. He and his wife are making a family visit to Jish, the village where many of the original residents of Kfar Bir'im now live. He's a teacher who works and lives in Haifa, a member of the Kfar Bir'im Committee; his wife is the daughter of one of its founders. Since the early 'fifties, the villagers have been suing the Israeli government to fulfill its original pledge to let them return. Unlike other displaced villagers, Kfar Bir'im people have received international support for their cause, including from the Pope. 18 They are Maronites, a very small minority in 'Palestine'. Some twenty five kilometers further west along the border, the people of another village, Ikrith, live in a similar predicament, evacuated in 1948 with a similar promise of return. But people say that each village publicizes its cause alone. Ikrith people are Sunni Muslims.

The country side we pass through on the way north is incredibly beautiful. I have to admit that Israel's stringent building laws, though grossly discriminatory against Palestinians, have preserved the natural landscape far better than in Lebanon, where building restrictions hardly exist, and money is king. Unfortunately it's too cloudy to see Tiberias even from Mount Jermok. We pass near many villages whose names are familiar to me from people in Lebanon who once lived in them - Faradi, Sufsaf, Samuai, May'roon, Sa'sa', 'Ain Zeytoun (where the Haganah killed 75, put their bodies in a well). We stop briefly in Sufsaf to let me take photos to show friends in Shatila. There's a Jewish settlement on one side of the road. On the other stand a few stone houses from the original village, half-ruined and empty. Jewish fundamentalists who once tried to live here have scribbled graffiti on the walls. Kamel points out an 'observation village' high on a hilltop, Mitzbeem, a post- Camp David establishment, built when the government feared Israeli Palestinians would demand autonomy.

On the way, Kamel Yacoub tells the story of Kfar Bir'im's destruction. Early in November 1948, the inhabitants left under Army pressure, with the promise that they could return in two weeks. This didn't happen. In September 1953, the village was destroyed by dynamite, to prevent the villagers returning. A month before the destruction their lands were confiscated. After 1967 and the end of Military Government, Bir'im people started burying the dead in the village cemetery. In 1972 they started using the church for weddings and baptisms. Begun as early as 1952, their case against the government is still in the courts.

After a while we reach a sign in Hebrew. Kamel translates: "Closed area. Forbidden to leave the road". He points to a patch of land where Kfar Bir'im was building a school extension in 1946 - his father donated the land. Another notice as we reach a checkpoint reads: "Property of the Church". The Vatican owns land here and is claiming it.

The only entry to the destroyed village

is through a checkpoint. It's like a tourist site, everyone except Kfar Bir'im residents has to pay a fee to enter. A stone temple has been partially restored - Israelis say it is a synagogue. How many tourists, I wonder, ever stop long enough to see the ruined village -- stones half covered by wild creepers -- or to ask what happened here? Both church and school are still standing. We go up the church's outer stairs to the recently reconstructed roof and the bell tower. The ring of dynamited home foundations is visible from here. The church has a guardian, Abu Ru'i. He's not allowed to stay at night. Anyone caught in Kfar Bir'im after 8pm is imprisoned.

Abu Ru'i was one of those who came back to Kfar Bir'im in the autumn of 1949 to prepare the fields for winter. All of them - men, women and children - were packed into lorries and expelled into the West Bank near Jenine. They returned via Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, heaven knows how. One young girl died on the way.

We return to Jish, where Kamel takes me to visit Umm Fawzi Shakkour, daughter of the man who was mukhtar at the time of Bir'im's destruction. After evacuation, she stayed with her mother and young siblings in Jish, while her father and brothers went to Rmeish (Lebanon).

Umm Fawzi begins to speak:
"If the one who is harming you is the judge, to whom will you complain? The first thing our life was -- my father was a mukhtar of the village. From the time I became aware he was mukhtar. Do you know what a mukhtar is? He is responsible for the village. People come to him, sometimes those of rank. Sometimes a minister comes. They all come to the mukhtar. We lived - you know, we ploughed the land, we harvested, we sowed tobacco. That was our life in villages. Until Israel came. Israel came. In our village we didn't fight. Not at all. Nobody resisted. They raised the white flag which means we surrender. They came into the village. There wasn't a single gunshot. There was no shooting at all. Israel came into the village. We stayed a week - Israel is still there. After a week they said we must evacuate the village for two weeks, fifteen days. 'Those who want to go and come from Jish, and those who want to go to Lebanon, let them go. And after fifteen days you will return.' That's what they promised us. What did my father say? He said, 'Pack your clothes. No one is coming back'. He knew. He said, 'No one will come back. All of you, pack your clothes'. To us, the ones in the house, to my mother, to my brothers and sisters - 'No one is coming back. This is a trick of the Jews which can't be believed..."

Umm Fawzi tells me that she missed out on schooling, but a cousin visiting from Canada one summer taught her to read. She shows me a book about Kfar Bir'im by one of its priests, Father Yusif Istefan, "Shehadeh: Yawmiat Kfar Bir'im 1948-1946", in Arabic, which reproduces all the letters between the villagers and the authorities