Kafar Birem

كفر برعم כפר ברעם

Our viewpoint to a just solution

1. The State is called upon to officially acknowledge its responsibility for uprooting Kafar Bir’em indigenous population from their village, and confiscating their land and demolishing their homes. The State is also requested to declare its responsibility for the consequences of its action.

2. We appeal to the State that it recognizes our rights and our ownership of the land that it confiscated in 1953.

3. We urge the State to recognize our right of return to our land, homes and village from which we were uprooted in 1948, and to enforce that right and recognize its implications.

4. The population of Kafar Bir’em will be ready and willing to examine the possibility of disclaiming the portion of the land in Kafar Bir’em that has been designated for use by the Jewish settlements of Kibbutz Baram and Moshav Dovev for construction and cultivation of fruitful trees purposes only. The portion of the land constitutes approximately 500 acres or 2000 dunums of a total of about 12,500 dunums or 3125 acres, which was the original area of Kafar Bir’em village before the displacement of its population.

5. We seek peaceful co-existence and cooperation with all the population in the region in accomplishment of the economic and social interest for all.

The successive ministerial committees that were appointed to find a solution to Kafar Bir’em issue (Libai Committee headed by Minister of Justice David Libai in 1995, and a second committee headed by Minister of Justice Dr. Yossi Beilin in 1998) have partially adopted our viewpoint. In addition, government institutions have since the displacement and uprooting of our population to date recognized several points that were consistent with our viewpoint. Therefore, we see no justification for the ongoing confiscation of our land and neglect of our claims for return. It should be noted that Libai Committee stressed in its recommendations of December 1995 that it banked on the promise made by the government and its institutions on the day we were evacuated from our village for two weeks. Thus we should not be regarded as absentees or that we have voluntarily failed to use our land. Rather we were denied access to our village, homes and land by the Minister of Defense and the Military Governor, while the Minister of Finance in the same government endorsed the confiscation of our land because we did not use it.