Yaroun (also spelled Yarun; ) is a municipality located in the Caza of Bint Jbeil in the Nabatieh Governorate in Lebanon.

Geography

Yaroun sits on a hill 750–900 meters above sea level. The main agricultural products of Yaroun are olives, wheat, and tobacco. Yaroun lies on the Israeli–Lebanese border. It overlooks Yir'on and Avivim in Israel.

History

Antiquity

It has been suggested that Yaroun is the biblical town of Iron/Jiron, mentioned in as a village belonging to the Tribe of Naphtali.

Ottoman period

In 1596, it was named as a village, يارون النصارى (Yarun an-Nasara meaning “Yarun of the Christians”) in the Ottoman nahiya (subdistrict) of Tibnin under the liwa' (district) of Safad, with a population of 37 Muslim households and 20 Muslim bachelors, and 39 Christian households and 11 Christian bachelors. The villagers paid taxes on a number of crops, such as wheat, barley, olive trees, vineyards, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 7,247 akçe. In 1674, western travelers saw remains of a monastery and church near by, with fragments from many columns. In 1781 Nasif al-Nassar was killed here by Jazzar Pasha when their two armies met. In 1838, Edward Robinson noted it as "a large village". Ernest Renan visited Yaroun during his mission to Lebanon and described what he found in his book Mission de Phénicie (1865-1874). He found many antiquities at Yaroun. On 31 December 1863, Louis Félicien de Saulcy, the French orientalist and archaeologist left Jish and arrived in Yaroun, and despite the heavy rain on that day, he examined the ruins of a temple, with a huge sarcophagi and sepulchral excavations cut into the rock, and a square well few meters deep, deducing that Yaroun was the Biblical town of Iaraoun, one of the cities of the Naphtali tribe mentioned in the Book of Joshua (xiv. 38). According to Victor Guérin, who visited in 1870, the town had 300 Greek Orthodox Christians and 200 Shia Muslims. He described the local church, devoted to St. George ("Mar Jiris") as simple and modest, and pointed out a Greek inscription and a decoration of a date tree in the local mosque, which, according to the inscription, were once part of a nearby temple. In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it: “A stone village, containing about 200 Metawileh and 200 Christians ; a Christian chapel in the village. The village is situated on the edge of a plain, with vineyards and arable land; to the west rises a basalt-top called el Burj, dotted with cisterns, and said to be the site of an ancient castle." SWP also found here the remains of an ancient Church, with Greek inscriptions.

Modern period

By the 1945 statistics the population was counted with Saliha and Maroun al-Ras, to a total of 1070 Muslims, with 11,735 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 7,401 dunams were allocated to cereals, 422 dunams were irrigated or used for orchards, while 58 dunams were built-up (urban) area. In the 1970s, a small group of immigrants from Yaroun, fleeing the Lebanese Civil War, settled in Bell, California. They founded a Lebanese American community that has since grown to about 2,000 members. In July 2006, Yaroun, like many other villages along Lebanon's southern border, were caught by the 2006 Lebanon War between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces. On 23 July, five civilians were killed in an Israeli strike in Yaroun; victims were aged between 6 months and 75 years old. In October 2023 and the months succeeding it, Yaroun was caught in the crossfire of another conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. As a result, Yaroun was subjected to significant Israeli airstrikes and shelling, which resulted in the destruction of much of the village and total displacement of its residents. In October 2024, Israel launched a ground incursion into the village and detonated the Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib Mosque, an incident that was recorded and posted on various social media channels. Later on, IDF released drone footage of the mostly ravaged village. As of October 2024, Israel has military control of the village, with Hezbollah occasionally shooting rockets and trying to ambush IDF forces within the village.

Demographics

In 2009, there were 365 members of the Saint-Georges parish of the Melkite Church in the village. As of 2010, the village had a year-round population of around 2,000, though this number rises to about 4,000 in the summer months. In 2014 Muslims made up 75.59% and Christians made up 24.16% of registered voters in Yaroun. 74.89% of the voters were Shiite Muslims and 21.31% were Greek Catholics.

Social life

While the majority of Yarounis visit Yaroun for the summer, approximately 60% to 70% of Yaroun natives reside outside of Lebanon, in Australia, USA, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and South Africa.

Notable persons