"IT BELONGS TO US"

About 500,000 Arabs are now refugees from areas of Palestine controlled by the victorious Israeli army. Jews--most of them refugees from Europe themselves--have taken over the Arabs' communities, where they now work Arab land, live in Arab houses and even use Arab cooking utensils. One such community is Akir, a village on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which TIME Correspondent John Luter visited last week. Here is Luter's report:

Cowboys & Indians. Until last May, Akir's baked-mud huts were inhabited by some 500 Arab families who worked the nearby vineyards and orange groves, occasionally sniped at a passing Jewish convoy. As the Jewish troops approached, most Arab families fled, the rest were chased out. Today Akir is a community of 300 Jewish families from Bulgaria, Poland, Rumania and Yemen. These new inhabitants have moved in to stay.

Where the road widens slightly to make Akir's village square, Jewish children romped around a gnarled sycamore tree last week, playing a popular game, the local version of cowboys & Indians; it is called "Jews & Arabs." Watching them was an elderly Bulgarian Jew who was selling small balloons from a folding table. Fifty yards away was the two-story stone building where, in old days, Arab fellahin used to sit gossiping over Turkish coffee. Part of one wall of the Arab cafe lay in rubble. The cafe had been hit by an Israeli shell. On the undamaged section of the building was a bright new sign in Hebrew: "Akir Office--General Federation of Jewish Labor."

"Six months ago Akir was deserted," said an Israeli captain. "There wasn't even a stray cat here. We didn't consider these Arab villages fit places for our people to live, but we had to have some place to put them." First the government sent workmen to spray Akir with DDT. Cement was poured over the earthen floors; boards or tin roofs replaced Arab thatching. Water pipes were laid between the courtyards.

The Cemetery-Untouched. Three months ago the first settlers arrived, each equipped by the government with an iron cot, mattress, two blankets and twelve Israeli pounds ($36). A young Rumanian Jew recently uncovered two metal washpots in his yard. Other settlers heard of it and began spading up crocks of wheat, kitchen utensils and tins of gasoline.

Life in Akir has few refinements. Moshe Ben Yaacov Libby, a lean, swarthy immigrant from Yemen, lives with his family of five in a rusty, corrugated-iron shelter. They cook Arab style over an open clay oven and eat from a rough board supported by orange crates. Moshe's wife has found only occasional work picking oranges, and the 'family's stake is going for food. But Moshe, who spent three years in a British detention camp in Aden, plans to stay. He says: "The Arabs of Yemen hated us. There we had a three-story house made of stone. But this will be our home."

Most of Akir's Jews come from Bulgaria ; the town is jokingly called "Little Sofia." Nissim Shamle, a Bulgarian electrician with four children, summarized the hopes and complaints of Akir. "We are far from 100% organized, but we see a good beginning," he said as a crowd of roughly dressed settlers in work caps nodded approval. "Of course there is still the Arab cemetery. We have left that untouched. We have a school and a small synagogue." -

Nissim seemed to feel that he had been unfairly treated by the Zionists who had preceded him to Israel. "We have not been given the help we need. In Bulgaria we were Jews. Now here we are considered Bulgarians." Yet Nissim had hope. Motioning toward the square, which one day may be a public park, he added: "We want people to see that Jews can make out of mud huts something beautiful. We are wide awake to the fact that we are on the main road to Jerusalem. When diplomats pass by in their big cars, they will say--this Akir, it is quite a place."

"They Won't Come Back." Asked how they felt about the return of the Arabs, most of Akir's settlers smiled at such a foolish question. But Nissim, shaking his fist, said: "They won't come back to this place. We have this by ourselves. It belongs to us."

The Israeli government feels the same way about Akir and scores of other onetime Arab villages. Few of the Arab refugees want to return to their ancestral homes in a Jewish state. They have an aversion to it like the attitude of the Jews toward a Europe from which they were driven by rampant nationalism. But if many Arab refugees did want to return, they would not be allowed to do so. Israel has made it clear to the U.N. Conciliation Commission that the door is closed to mass returns of Arabs. The Israelis say they need living room for their own people, 109,000 of whom have entered Israel in the last four months.

Said an Israeli official last week: "We don't have room for the Arabs. We want a real peace. If we have a large Arab minority, there might be friction."

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