Many ancient remains have been excavated at Kafr Yasif, including
mosaic floors,
Corinthian columns, and
cisterns cut in rock. Remains dating to the
Persian,
Hellenistic (4th-3rd centuries BCE) and
Roman 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. Remains dating to the
Byzantine and
Early Islamic (
Umayyad Crusaders and Caliphates Remains dating to the
Crusader and
Mamluk or
Cafriasim. 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. In the 13th century it was inhabited by Christians and paid
tithes to the
Bishop of Acre. In 1257 Kafr Yasif appears in a document relating to a disagreement between the Bishop of Acre and the Teutonic Knights about its income. At one point it was a
casale of the
Knights Hospitallers.
Ottoman Empire In the
Ottoman era, the main crops were olives and cotton. 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. 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. 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. According to a map by
Pierre Jacotin from
Napoleon's invasion of 1799 the place was known as
Koufour Youcef. In 1838, Kafr Yasif had a
Greek Orthodox Christian majority with Muslim and Druze minorities. 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. 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.
British Mandate 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. 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. The
1931 census of Palestine recorded Kafr Yasif's population as 1,057. 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. In compensation, the town was rebuilt by the British with a school and a city hall which are still in use today. 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." 350 were Muslim, 1,105
Christians, and 40 were listed as "other" (Druze). The village owned 6,763
dunams of land, while 75 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
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. 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. 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. On 1 March, another 250 refugees were deported.
Knesset member
Tawfik Toubi strongly protested these expulsions. 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. 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. Yani remained in office until his death in 1962. In 1972–1973,
Violet Khoury was elected mayor of Kafr Yasif, making her the first Arab woman to head a local council in Israel. The population remained under
martial law until 1966. The first meeting of the Congress of Druze Intellectuals took place in Kafr Yasif on 26 August 1966. The initiative behind the formation of the congress came from the youth of Druze villages in the Galilee, led by Salman Faraj. When the Druze leadership in the Department of Minority Affairs gained knowledge of the congress's planned meeting and failed to persuade Faraj to postpone it, the spiritual head of the Druze community, Sheikh
Amin Tarif locked the gates of the
al-Khadr shrine, where the meeting was to be held. The congress was instead held in a nearby house in the town and one of the clauses of the summit expressed Druze solidarity with the other Arab communities of Israel. Kafr Yasif became the site of the first major violent incident between Christians and Druze in Israel on 11 April 1981. The clash began during a football match between fans of the town's local team and that of the nearby Druze village of
Julis; a young man from Julis was fatally stabbed by a Christian from Kafr Yasif. Although reconciliation talks were immediately arranged to prevent further violence, the local council of Kafr Yasif refused to give up the name of the alleged killer. Hundreds of Druze youths from Julis subsequently entered Kafr Yasif, prompting the mayor to call for emergency back-up from the regional
police, a request which was denied. On 13 April, about 60 armed police officers positioned themselves in the field between the two villages, and while a
sulha (traditional Arab peace agreement) was being negotiated, a group of heavily armed Julis residents stormed the town, burning down 85 houses, 17 stores, a few workshops and 31 cars. A church was also damaged. By the end of the attack three residents of Kafr Yasif had been shot dead and more were wounded. The police did not intervene, with some officers claiming they were not sufficiently armed. None of the attackers, which according to witnesses included some off-duty Druze soldiers from the
Israeli Army, were arrested. Most of the compensation for the damage came from the Muslim
waqf of Israel and a smaller portion from the
World Council of Churches. ==Demographics==