Former residents of Baram, an Arab village on the Lebanese border evacuated for security reasons in 1948, demonstrated outside the Knesset today to protest Sunday’s Cabinet decision barring their return to the site of their former homes. The Cabinet held that the security considerations that prevailed 25 years ago were still valid and that the inhabitants of Baram and its sister village of Ikrit could not return.
Representatives of the Baram demonstrators were received in the Knesset by members of the Labor Alignment. They told the MKs they did not consider the Cabinet’s ruling final. The issue of Baram and Ikrit was brought to the attention of Premier Golda Meir by Archbishop Joseph Raya of the Maronite church, the spiritual leader of the villagers. He accepted Mrs. Meir’s proposal some weeks ago that they abide by whatever the Cabinet decided. Raya is abroad and could not be reached for comment today. Most of the villagers presently live at Gush Halab and Raame. But recently they have expressed dissatisfaction with their relocation and the compensation offered them for their lost property. They insist on returning to their old homes even though Ikrit and Baram were razed in 1953 for security reasons and the surrounding land comprises a security buffer zone.
The villagers have won a certain amount of sympathy for their cause from some prominent Israelis. The Cabinet’s decision barring their return was not unanimous. It was opposed by four ministers, Natan Peled and Victor Shemtov of Mapam, Minister of Tourism Moshe Kol of the Independent Liberals and one of the top figures of the Labor Party, Deputy Premier and Education Minister Yigal Allon, it was learned today.
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