Hi Thameen:
I noticed you updated the file. Great. I'll keep putting comments on the locations:
Your placemark for Kafr Bir'im , a Christian village on the Lebanese border, depopulated in 1948 and levelled in 1953, is very close. 300 meters southwest the church is still standing; at least it was when I visited there May 1997. See my placemark. The site is now a national park around an antique synagogue excavated there (before 1948 as far as I know), 50 meters north in the upper left corner of the grass field.
Some people of Kafr Bir'im apparently went or were transported to Jish , three kilometer southeast, that still exists as a village, 500 meters east of your placemark. You put it as a destroyed village and a still existing one at the same time. There might be some truth in that, as part of the original population might have fled after some atrocities in 1948. Walid Khalidi does not mention Jish as a destroyed village. I would like to hear more facts from people there.
I repeat a main source for the destroyed villages:
Walid Khalidi (editor), All that Remains. The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 , Washington D.C. 1992.
It's also available in Arabic. It's quite expensive now, but libraries should have it or order it at the
Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington.
Three earlier remarks of mine, that you already included in your update, I mention here, so that anyone can react:
- Of Suba , located on a hilltop, only the antique (Byzantine) fundaments of the village are left, as an archeological dig, now belonging to kibbutz Tsuba to the west.
- Bayt Thul I visited with a former villager, her son, his wife and 4 grandchildren. We had a picknick at the ruins of their house on the southern slope of the hill there. They showed me the wells and the rubble where the house once stood. Apparently many stones were used to make a lookout-point.
- The village basin of Imwaz, destroyed in 1967, is clearly visible. The area is now called Park Canada; the village was turned into an archeological (Roman) site along the water from the hill, southeast. It's now a picnic area were I noticed both Jewish and Palestinian visitors.
All the best,
Hanaq
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