Kafr Yasif (, Kufr Yasīf; ) is an Arab town in the Northern District of Israel. It is located northeast of the city of Acre and adjacent to Abu Snan and Yarka. The population of Kafr Yasif is Christian, Muslim and Druze. In 2022, 52.4% of the population was Christian, 44.9% Muslim and 2.7% Druze.
History Many ancient remains have been excavated at Kafr Yasif, including mosaic floors, Corinthian columns, and cisterns cut in rock.Dauphin, 1988, pp. 638–39 Remains dating to the Persian,Zedan, 2017, Kafr Yasif Hellenistic (4th-3rd centuries BCE)Streger, 2020, Kafr Yasif (B) and RomanAbu Raya, 2010, Kafr Yasif (B) periods have been found here.
Roman and Byzantine empires According to a tradition from Kafr Yasif, cited by F.M. Abel, the village was named Kefar Akko, lit. 'Akko village', until Josephus fortified it and named it after himself.Avi-Yonah 1953, p. 97, note 11.
Remains dating to the Byzantine‘Uqsa, 2021, Kafr YasifStreger, 2020, Kafr Yasif (A) and Early Islamic (Umayyad/Abbasid) periods have been found here. Furnaces used in the manufacture of glass; starting in the Byzantine (or possibly Roman) period and continuing into the Umayyad/Abbasid (fifth–seventh centuries CE) era have been found here.Abu Raya, 2010, Kafr Yasif (A)
Crusader period Remains dating to the CrusaderPringle, 1997, p. 119: No Crusader remains had (by 1997) been identified in the village. and Mamluk periods have been found in Kafr Yasif.
During the Crusader period, it was known as Cafresi, Cafriasif,Pringle, 1997, p. 119 or Cafriasim.Conder, 1890, p. 31 In 1193, Queen Isabella I and her spouse Henry II of Champagne granted the casale of Kafr Yasif to prior Heinrich of the Teutonic Knights.Strehlke, 1869, p. 25, No. 29; Cited in Röhricht, 1893, RRH, p. 190, No. 710; Cited in Pringle, 2009, p. 132 In the 13th century it was inhabited by Christians and paid tithes to the Bishop of Acre.Ellenblum, 2003, p. 149 In 1257 Kafr Yasif appears in a document relating to a disagreement between the Bishop of Acre and the Teutonic Knights about its income.Strehlke, 1869, pp. 91–94, No. 112; Cited in Röhricht, 1893, RRH, p. 331, No. 1260; Cited in Ellenblum, 2003, p. 146 At one point it was a casale of the Knights Hospitallers. It was part of the domain of the Crusaders during the hudna (truce) between the Crusaders based in Acre and the Mamluk sultan Qalawun in 1283.
Ottoman period
In the Ottoman era, the main crops were olives and cotton.Lewis, 1952, p. 17 Ottoman tax records from 1596 showed that Kafr Yasif, part of the Safed Sanjak, had a population of 58 Muslim households, seven Muslim bachelors and 19 Jewish households. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, fruit trees, cotton, goats and beehives, winter pastures, jizya (poll tax), in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 12,877 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf.Hutteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 191.Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6 writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9. In 1618 the Druze governor of Safed Fakhr al-Din Ma'n destroyed the home of the Shia Muslim notable Ahmad Quraytim in Kafr Yasif because Quraytim had joined forces with Fakhr al-Din's rival, the governor of Lajjun Sanjak, Ahmad Turabay.Abu-Husayn, 1985, p. 107.
Kafr Yasif and its surrounding villages in the Sahil Akka (plain of Acre) district were controlled by a local sheikh, Najm, in the first decade or so of the 18th century. Its cotton crop was sold to the Dutch merchant Paul Maashoek. In the 1740s, ten Jewish households under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Soloman Abadi settled in Kafr Yasif and were joined by Jews, who left Safad in the early 1760s as a result of the 1759 earthquakes. According to Jewish travelers, the Jews in Kafr Yasif lived well under Daher al-Umar, the Arab strongman of the Galilee (1730–1775), who allowed Jews to settle there.Barnay, 1992, p. 156. According to a map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 the place was known as Koufour Youcef.Karmon, 1960, p. 162 .
In 1838, Kafr Yasif had a Greek Orthodox Christian majority with Muslim and Druze minorities.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, 2nd appendix, p. 132 In 1880 the village had a population of about 600, of which 500 were Greek Orthodox Christians and 100 were Muslims. A church stood in the village, dated by Guèrin to c. 1740 and its iconostasis contained a number of icons provided by Russia. A stone-cut well, stone reservoirs and troughs, and a stone tower decorated by a carved cross, remaining from a larger fortification, were also to be seen.Guérin, 1880, pp. 4-5; "A midi trente minutes, je parviens à Kefr Yasif, et pendant que l'on dresse ma tente sous un bouquet de vieux oliviers, je vais examiner ce village. Il est assis sur une colline dont les pentes inférieures vers l'ouest sont soutenues par un puissant mur d'appui, aux blocs réguliers, la plupart de grand appareil et antiques. Kefr Yasif renferme 600 habitants, parmi lesquels 100 tout au plus sont Musulmans; les autres appartiennent à la religion grecque schismatique. Ces derniers ont une église qui date de cent quarante ans et dans l'intérieur de laquelle quelques tableaux passables, qui ornent l'iconostase, sont, m'a-t-on dit, un don de la Russie. La construction la plus ancienne du village est une sorte de petite tour carrée, bâtie avec des pierres très régulières, et renfermant une chambre voâtée qu'éclaire un œil-de-bœuf au-dessus duquel une croix a été sculptée au dehors. Elle faisait partie autrefois d'un bâtiment plus considérable, qui a été démoli et remplacé par des maisons toutes modernes. Au bas de la colline du village, vers l'ouest, est un beau puits, profond de 25 brasses et d'apparence antique. Il est construit en pierres de taille. Le réservoir et les auges qui l'environnent sont aussi bâtis avec des pierres de même appareil. A cinq minutes au sud de Kefr Yasif, on me signale l'emplacement d'une ancienne église, dont il ne subsiste plus que le souvenir. De là on a extrait plusiem·s colonnes et de nombreuses pierres de taille. "Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, pp. 146–47Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 169 According to the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine, Kafr Yasif was a stone-built village surrounded by olive groves and arable land, and provided with water from cisterns. The population consisted of 300 Christians, who worshiped at the Greek Orthodox chapel, and 50 Druzes. A population list from about 1887 showed that Kafr Yasif had about 910 inhabitants; three quarters Greek Catholic Christians, one quarter Muslim.Schumacher, 1888, p. 172
British Mandate period
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kafr Yasif is listed with a population of 870 residents; 665 Christians, 172 Muslims and 33 Druze.Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Acre, p. 36 On 1 December 1925, Kafr Yasif became one of the few Arab villages in the Galilee to receive local-council status during the British mandate period. Yani Kustandi Yani served as mayor from 1933 to 1948.Sa'di, Ahmad. "Control and resistance at local-level institutions: A study of Kafr Yassif's local council under the military government", Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 23, 2001, pp. 31–47. The 1931 census of Palestine recorded Kafr Yasif's population as 1,057.Mills (1932), p. 103
On 14–17 February 1939, during the Arab revolt in Palestine, a group of Palestinian Arab rebels planted a mine on the road near Kafr Yasif which blew up a British vehicle, killing nine soldiers (according to the Arabs) or one soldier and wounding two others (according to the British). The British Army proceeded setting ablaze homes in Kafr Yasif as punishment, burning between 68 and 72 homes before being informed by local residents that Kuwaykat's inhabitants were responsible for the attack. The British troops fatally shot nine Arabs from the direction of Kuwaykat as they approached the village.Swedenberg (2003), pp. 107–09. In compensation, the town was rebuilt by the British with a school and a city hall which are still in use today.Kafr Yasif (Israel) Municipality Flags and Descriptions. According to a British chaplain, "The people at Kafr Yasif were very eager to point out that the troops who destroyed their houses were not English but Irish."
In the 1945 statistics, an official land and population survey, Kafr Yasif had a population of 1,400:Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 40 350 were Muslim, 1,105 Christians, and 40 were listed as "other" (Druze).Palestine Government Village Statistics, April 1945 p. 2.Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 4 The village owned 6,763 dunams of land, of which 3,234 were plantations and irrigable land, on 3,310 they grew cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 80 while 75 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 130
Israel
On 8–14 July 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Carmeli Brigade and the 7th Armored Brigade occupied Kafr Yasif as part of the first stage of Operation Dekel.Morris (2004), p. 416. The mayor, Yani Yani, leveraged his contacts with the Druze Ma'di family of neighboring Yirka, which maintained friendly ties with the Israelis, to sign a surrender agreement mediated by the Israeli officer Haim Orbach on 10 July preventing the expulsion of the village's residents.Manna 2022, p. 45. Unlike in many other captured Arab towns, the majority of the population remained, and about 700 inhabitants of nearby villages, especially al-Birwa, al-Manshiyya, and Kuwaykat, took refuge there. On 28 February 1949, most of them were put into trucks and driven to the front lines, where they were forced to cross the frontier border into Lebanon.Freeman, Charles (25 March 1949). Evacuation of Refugees from Kafr Yasif.Jiryis (1968), p. 57. On 1 March, another 250 refugees were deported.Morris (2004), p. 515. Knesset member Tawfik Toubi strongly protested these expulsions.Masalha and Said (2005), p. 27.
Kafr Yasif is one of the few Arab towns in the Galilee that retained most of the land it held before 1948. Of 673 hectares owned in 1945, 458 hectares remained in 1962, with 76 hectares expropriated in 1952–1953.Jiryis, S. "The land question in Israel", MERIP Reports, No. 47 (May, 1976) pp. 5–20, 24–26. On 5 June 1951, the Israeli government reactivated the local council in the only example of an Arab local council that continuously existed after 1948. In the first elections, held in 1954, the former mayor Yani Yani was re-elected mayor as head of a Communist Party and Nationalist Group (Kafr Yassif List) coalition, defeating the Mapai candidate.Pappe, Ilan (2011). The Forgotten Palestinians. A History of the Palestinians in Israel. Yale. . p. 96. Yani remained in office until his death in 1962. He became leader of the Arab Popular Front, which evolved into the Al Ard movement. The APF campaigned for the protection of waqf properties in Israel.Pappe (2011), pp. 84–85. In 1972–1973, Violet Khoury was elected mayor of Kafr Yasif, making her the first Arab woman to head a local council in Israel.Herzog (1999), p. 175. The population remained under martial law until 1966.