Akhzib: Eli Avivi's Inn on the Sea
(Jan
/ Feb 2006)
The following account is a selection from a book that
Michael Benazon is writing about his stormy love affair with Israel.
Many years ago, when I was young and idealistic, I joined Toronto Habonim's
Young Adult Workshop and set out to spend nine months on a kibbutz in
Israel's Western Galilee. Something struck a chord in me, and I stayed
on in Israel for a total of fourteen years.
Gesher Haziv, where I lived for four years, is situated on two low hills overlooking a fertile plain five kilometres south of the Lebanese border and less than a kilometre from the Mediterranean Sea. The view from my cabin on the northern hill was one of the most beautiful in Israel. To the west I had a spectacular view of the sea and of three low islands slightly to the north. Between the sea and the kibbutz were the picturesque ruins of the ancient village of Akhzib, or as the Arabs called it, Al-Zib. Whenever I approached my cabin I would see the dome of the mosque and the walls of several houses. As the afternoon sun sank into the sea, the dark remains of the village would be silhouetted against the pink glow of the western sky.
On the afternoon of our arrival in Israel on Sept. 23, 1954, we were taken for our first swim in the sea on the Akhzib beach. And at every opportunity that fall we would spend part of the afternoon there. Though the ruins of Akhzib were just metres away, at first we did not dare to penetrate that grim and forbidding site.
One day, a month later, I set out with a couple of friends to explore the village, ruined and deserted since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. From a distance, it had the appearance of a tell: the buildings, or what was left of them, were built over earlier structures, which could no longer be seen. First we passed through the dunes to get to the sea. We then walked north along the sandy beach till we reached the rock, which serves as the foundation of the village. From there we climbed a few metres till we reached a tangled passageway. Walking was extremely difficult. The alleyways were choked with rubble and weeds. In fact, there wasn't much to see. It was difficult to know what had once been homes and what might have been the school, the clinic, the mukhtar' s house, or where one building ended and another began. The mosque, largely intact, was the highlight of our visit. It was lofty, cool and light inside but, like the ruined homes, raised all sorts of questions. We would have welcomed a guide. The buildings were of various shapes and sizes. Often they consisted of square stones placed one atop the other, generally without mortar, although occasionally mud served the purpose. Across the top, wooden poles or planks supported an earthen roof. A few buildings constructed with a greater sense of space and design reflected greater affluence. Some of these structures were made of cement blocks with a concrete foundation. Once, the village was home for almost two thousand people who fished the waters, tilled the surrounding fields, and tended groves of citrus fruits, apricots, figs, olives, and bananas.
I recall feeling uncomfortable-physically and emotionally-and soon we retreated back to where the waves broke against the jagged rocks. Here the shoreline teemed with life: all kinds of tiny creatures and water plants. We collected a few attractive stones from the beach and then walked a hundred metres further north to the bridge over the Koren wadi, where the failed Palmakh1 action took place in June 1946. On the east side of the road, we saw workmen constructing a small memorial in honour of those who had died there.
This was the first of several visits I made to the remains of Arab villages scattered around Israel. I recall wondering why some of them were intact and thriving, some in ruins, some inhabited by Jewish immigrants, while still others had been totally levelled and any signs of previous habitation completely effaced. The few attempts I made to enquire about these anomalies usually elicited the response that hostile villages had been destroyed, while those villages which had been friendly and on good terms with their Jewish neighbours had been spared. Much later I learned that the truth was a good deal more complicated. But on this, my first visit to Akhzib, there was no one to ask. I was aware by then that Gesher Haziv was occupying the lands, although not the actual site, of an Arab village that once had a population roughly eight times larger than the number of Jews inhabiting the kibbutz.
Akhzib is a very ancient site, first settled by Canaanites, and mentioned several times in the Bible (Joshua 15:44, 19:29-30, Micah 1:14). The discovery of Phoenician artefacts at Akhzib indicates that it was part of ancient Phoenicia rather than part of ancient Israel. It apparently had a small harbour for fishing or for transporting produce. If we regard the scattered references in the Bible as historically correct, then Akhzib was probably one of the twenty cities in Western Galilee that Solomon bestowed on Hiram, King of Tyre, in return for the cedar, cypress, and gold given to Solomon to help him build the Temple (I Kings 9:11-13). One of the Biblical references suggests that the northern coastal area assigned to the tribe of Asher had a mixed population: "Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acre, or the inhabitants of Sidon ? or of Achzib ? , but the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land" (Judges 1:31-2).
The Crusaders built a fortified chateau on the site around
1123, which became known as Casal Imbert or Castellum Ziph. Seemingly,
the Imberts settled among the local inhabitants, some of whom may have
become Christian. According to one source, the Crusaders encouraged European
settlers to populate the town. No doubt the fertile fields irrigated by
the Koren stream provided abundant produce for the Crusader city of Acre
thirteen kilometres to the south. Akhzib fell to Sultan Beybers in 1271.
He probably destroyed the fort, but apparently allowed the local inhabitants
to stay on.
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan assigned Western Galilee to the
Palestinians because of its large Arab population. There were, however,
five Jewish settlements in the region: the small town of Nahariya, built
by German Jews as a seaside resort, and Kibbutz Yehiam, about twelve kilometres
to the east. There were also three kibbutzim on the Lebanese border-Hanita,
Matzuba, and Eilon. Nahariya could be supplied by sea, but the coastal
highway was the only means of supplying the distant outposts. Akhzib dominated
the road. However, it was not just the strategic position of the town
that determined its fate.
On June 16, 1946 the Haganah command decided to demonstrate its power,
presence, and determination to the British by blowing up all the bridges
leading in or out of Palestine. On that "Night of the Bridges,"
almost all the targets were demolished. However, the attempt to blow up
two small bridges over the Koren stream, skirting the northern edge of
Akhzib, was a disastrous failure. Fourteen Palmakhnikim (the men of the
striking force) were killed. Over half of them were 20 years old or younger.
Some people assumed that the unit was ambushed by the men of Akhzib and
that the Palmakhnikim were killed in combat.
It was perhaps politically useful to attribute the disaster to the men of Akhzib, but there is more to the story. To begin with, it is highly unlikely that the villagers had the weapons, the manpower, and the specialized training to wipe out a Palmakh platoon. According to Rivka Gershon, one of the founders of Kibbutz Yehiam,2 the fourteen young men reached the bridge at night and began to assemble their explosives. One of them lit a candle to shed light on the operation. In so doing, he inadvertently detonated the explosives pack. In the explosion that followed, the railway bridge was demolished and all fourteen were killed. Except for Yehiam Weitz, the commander of the operation, whose body remained intact, the men were blown apart. The local Arabs buried thirteen of them in the sand near the bridge. They did not notice that the body of Yehiam Weitz had been hurled some distance away. It was found the next day by a Hagana unit sent to find out what had happened. The Hagana men brought the body out, and Yehiam Weitz was first interred in Haifa.
There are some problems with this story. For one thing,
who survived to report that the explosion was set off by lighting a candle?
Rivka acknowledged that the explosion might have been set off by enemy
fire. This version would imply that the local Arabs had spotted the Palmakhnikim
and attacked them before they could organize a proper defence, let alone
set off their explosives. Rivka also reported that the British, who had
a camp less than a kilometre away, immediately came to investigate. Why
didn't they discover the body of Yehiam Weitz? Did they permit the men
of Akhzib to bury the other bodies without further ado? Surely they would
have wanted to conduct an investigation of the bungled operation. According
to Rivka, it was the British who reported this story to the Jewish residents
of Matsuba and Eilon. But that is hardly an eyewitness account of the
affair.
However, David Coren, one of the founders of Gesher Haziv, had a significantly
different version of the story. According to him, the Palmakh unit was
of platoon strength. Half the men were killed in the explosion. The other
half escaped and hid in caves near Hanita and Matsuba. They were the ones
who survived to report how their comrades were killed in the premature
blast. This version is somewhat less heroic than the version above, but
it is more coherent. Both versions seem to agree that the remains of the
bodies were exhumed and buried in Haifa. Later, in the early 1950s, the
remains were reburied a few metres away from the bridge, and a memorial
park was constructed around the grave sites. The role of the local Arabs
in all this is unclear, but evidently some people preferred to blame the
men of Akhzib, rather than to admit that the Palmakhnikim may inadvertently
have caused their own deaths.
Two years later, on May 14, 1948, during the second stage of the Arab-Israeli War, the Haganah settled the score. According to historian Benny Morris,3 the inhabitants of Akhzib ran for their lives when the advancing Carmeli Brigade launched a mortar attack on it. Most of the villagers fled north to Lebanon. The few who remained were rounded up and deported to Al-Mazra'a south of Nahariya. Within a day or two, Moshe Carmel, the Brigade Commander, apparently acting without specific orders from the high command, ordered his demolition squads to destroy the village. Clearly, the intention was to secure control of the road, prevent the return of the original inhabitants, and make it possible for the entire region to be settled by new immigrants. The only buildings to survive the demolitions were the mosque and a few houses in the village and nearby fields.
In his account, Morris makes it clear that Yosef Weitz-the
Director of the Jewish National Fund Lands Development Division, and member
of the so-called Transfer Committee (established to plan and carry out
the deportations of Palestinians)-was well known as a hard-liner when
it came to the fate of captured Arab villages. In December 1948, Weitz
visited what was left of Akhzib and in his diary4 allowed himself to wonder
"if it was good that it [Akhzib] was destroyed and would it not have
been a greater revenge had we now settled Jews in the village houses."
In footnoting this reference, Morris speculates that "Weitz's reference
to 'revenge' related to his son, Yehiam, a Palmakh officer, who had died
during the Palmakh raid in 1946 on the Az-Zib bridge, killed by Az-Zib
villagers." Morris does not provide any evidence for his assumption
that the men of Akhzib were indeed the culprits. In his book, Morris makes
the point that the army thought it best to utterly destroy the villages,
but as Jewish immigrants poured into the emerging state, the new government
was faced with the problem of finding houses for them. Consequently, they
called on the army to cease the demolitions and allow immigrants to inhabit
the now empty villages. his reversal of policy explains why Jews still
inhabit Arab homes in various places-Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, Jerusalem, Safad,
etc., and even in small settlements like Sasa and Ein Hod, where both
the original name and several buildings have survived. But as we shall
see, in an ironic way, Weitz did achieve his revenge.
The story of Akhzib has, I'm afraid, few redeeming features. In 2003,
in a letter to the editor of Ha'aretz, a retired army officer, Dov Yirmiya,5
recounted another tragic incident occurring in the aftermath of the capture
and destruction of Akhzib. It appears that in May 1948 a squad of Israeli
soldiers gang-raped a young woman who had remained in the village. When
Yirmiya's commander refused to charge the culprits, Yirmiya reported the
crime to the army's Criminal Investigation Division. The squad was called
in, briefly detained, and interrogated. Within a week they were back in
the unit. At an officers' meeting the Brigade Commander suggested the
girl be "liquidated" in order to prevent the story from coming
to the attention of UN observers in the area. Following an angry intervention
from Yirmiya, the meeting decided to send the girl to a Negev kibbutz
until the issue died down. In the ongoing fighting, Yirmiya was unable
to follow up on the fate of the girl. He never heard anything further
about her, but in the light of a similar episode that occurred around
the same time, he concluded: "I have my doubts about whether she
ever really got there, alive."6
On Jan. 27, 1949, a month after Weitz had visited the ruins of Akhzib, the first contingent of kibbutznikim occupied the hill immediately to the east. It was apparently David Coren, who named the new kibbutz Gesher Haziv (lit. bridge of brightness) to commemorate the failed Palmakh action.7 The adjective ziv (lit. bright) also seems to allude to the Arab place-name Al-Zib. But if so, it is another ironic twist, for zib in Arabic can mean trickster. So Al-Zib may be a place where things are not what they seem.
For those of us on the Young Adult Workshop, the beach opposite the kibbutz was a magic spot to spend a few quiet hours. We could slip down to the beach at any hour of the day and almost always find it deserted. Often on our return from a visit to the city, we would walk down the hill, pass through the ancient olive groves, cross the coastal road, and take a refreshing plunge into the sea. On the way back, in the right season, we would pluck ripe figs from a few of the remaining trees. To this day, their sweet fragrance remains stamped on my memory. I didn't get to the Akhzib beach quite so frequently during my army days, but whenever I had the chance I would swim there with one of my girlfriends. As long as we didn't go on a Saturday in the summer, bathing suits were usually unnecessary. It seemed a veritable return to the Garden of Eden.
In the early 1950s, Akhzib became the home of the reclusive Eli Avivi. At first, he combed the beaches for wood, which he used to make one of the ruined houses habitable. Vague rumours floated around Gesher Haziv that Avivi held wild parties in one or more of the rooms he had cleared and renovated. He looked like one of those hirsute 18th century hermits who were hired to inhabit fake ruins built by wealthy English lords, and to leap out unexpectedly from time to time to scare the ladies. At some point Avivi saw the tourist potential in what he was doing. He named the place Achzibland and issued "visas" to visit his realm. He established a small museum in the shell of the mukhtar's house to store the Phoenician and other artefacts he found over the years. With the money he collected from his guests, he was able to re-roof two or three buildings and make them into credible lodgings. Later, he erected a couple of more substantial buildings-one for himself and his companion, and another to serve as a covered patio.
The site of Akhzib has become commercialized in recent years. what with
Club Med, a national park, a camping ground, and other modern amenities,
but the government allowed Avivi to indulge his whims and he, in turn,
was able to preserve a small section of the ruins of Akhzib. Of course,
very few in Israel care or even know about the original inhabitants who
fled to Lebanon, and ended up in squalid camps. Some of these refugees
no doubt risked their lives to cross the border to seek out relatives
or to take one last look at their ancestral home. It is highly unlikely
that any of them will ever be allowed to return to Akhzib, but at least
a monument to its existence still stands. And, despite the passage of
time, it is still possible to spend a night or two with an aging Eli Avivi
and his companion in their rough but romantic inn on the sea. And so in
an ironic way, Yosef Weitz had his revenge.
1 The elite units of Hagana, the pre-state Jewish underground militia.
2 As told to me in an interview conducted on 12 April 2005.
3 See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-49,
(Cambridge UP, 1998): 124-25,169, 187, 326-27, 336.
4 Weitz, Diary III, p. 367, as quoted in Morris, p. 169.
5 Dov Yirmiya was born in Palestine in 1914. He was a founder of Kibbutz
Eilon, served with the British army in North Africa and Italy, was involved
in illegal immigration, became a colonel in the Israeli army, authored
My War Diary in 1983 (his account of the Lebanon War), adopted the unrecognized
Beduin village of Arab El Cammane in Galilee, and received several awards
for fostering Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.
6 Ha'aretz Magazine, 19 December 2003: 2.
7 As he explained in the interview on 12 April 2005.