An Arab Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, who is a member of the Labor Party, said today he planned to raise in the party the controversial issue of the government’s refusal to allow former residents of two villages on the Lebanese border to resettle in the villages, Baram and Ikrit.
Elias Nakhleh made the announcement after he had met with Archbishop Joseph Raya. The Archbishop had been leading a vigorous campaign for a reversal of the decision. The villagers, all Christian Arabs, were evacuated from the villages in 1948 as a security measure. The villages, execpt for their churches, were leveled. Nakhleh reportedly has urged the Archbishop, who has been talking about carrying his appeal to Europe and the United States, to tone down his efforts.
A member of the Archbishop’s Greek Catholic community, the deputy speaker apparently agrees with a number of Arab Christian leaders who feel that the Archbishop’s “strident” tactics may make it more difficult for Premier Golda Meir’s government to reverse its decision because this might give an impression of yielding to dramatic public pressures on a serious security issue. However, the Archbishop reportedly has not changed plans to lead a protest march through East Jerusalem next Wednesday. Some 1900 Christian Arabs consider themselves residents of Baram and 600 of Ikrit.
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