Fir'im

Fir’im stood on the southeastern slope of Mount Kan’an at about 500 metres, four kilometres from Safad, overlooking the Ghawr — the low ground along the Jordan — between Lake Tiberias and Lake Hula. It was known by its present name in the Crusader period. In 1596 it was a village in the nahiya of Jira, in the liwa’ of Safad, with a population of 446, paying tax on wheat, barley and olives and on goats, beehives and a press used for olives or grapes. Travellers in the late nineteenth century described a stone-built village at the end of a ridge whose 200 residents cultivated small gardens and grew olives and figs.

The village was densely built, its stone houses laid out northwest to southeast. Its entire population was Muslim. A village council made up of representatives of the village families dealt with matters affecting the community. There was a boys’ elementary school and two olive presses. The economy rested on agriculture, with fruit the main crop and grain second: in the 1942/43 season 700 dunums were planted with olive trees, and fruit trees grew on every side of the village, especially to the northeast, north, west and southwest. In 1944/45, 700 dunums were allocated to cereals and 935 were irrigated or planted in orchards, out of 2,191 in all — a small land area for the population, and 82 per cent of it cultivable. Springs and wells supplied water for farming and for the household. The 1931 census counted 527 people in 109 houses; the 1945 statistics counted 740. An archaeological site near Fir’im held the ruins of buildings and rock-hewn tombs.

In accordance with the plan of Operation Yiftach, Fir’im and two other villages were sporadically mortared on the night of 2 May 1948. The attacks were mounted on the three villages “in order that in the end the Arabs would flee from them,” according to an Israeli military report on the operation. Some villagers appear to have stayed on, because a military intelligence report filed in June 1948 records that the village was evacuated on 26 May as the result of a direct assault. It was the declared intention of Operation Yiftach to cleanse eastern Galilee of its inhabitants during the month of May. The Palestinian historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif adds that the fall of Fir’im demoralised the city of Safad.

There are no Israeli settlements on the village land; Chatzor ha-Gelilit, established in 1953, lies about a kilometre southeast of the village, and Zochrot records part of it standing on village ground. The rubble of the destroyed houses is scattered across the site. Some terraces with olive trees remain, and olive trees and cactus grow on the site and the land around it. Small portions of that land are wooded; most is used for pasture.

Sources

• Fir’im — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (palquest)
• Fir’im — Zochrot