Iqrit (Arabic: إقرت or إقرث, Iqrith; sometimes romanized as Ikret) was a Palestinian Christian village, located 25 kilometres (16 miles) northeast of Acre, in the western Galilee.

[6] In October 1948, the village's Palestinian Arab inhabitants were expelled by Zionist forces during the 1948 Palestine war, and the territory later became part of the new State of Israel.

Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Iqrit appeared in the 1596 tax registers as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Akka under the Liwa of Safad, with a population of 374 and an economy dependent largely on goats, beehives and agriculture.

[13] Like a number of other villages in the area, Iqrit was linked to the coastal highway from Acre to Ras an-Naqura via a secondary road leading to Tarbikha.

[16] At the time of their eviction in November 1948, there were 491 citizens in Iqrit, including 432 Melkites (Greek Catholics), inhabiting the entire area of the village.

By 1948, the village owned about 600 dunams (600,000 m²) of private property with groves of fig trees that served all inhabitants of Iqrit and the surroundings.

The groves covered the hill of al-Bayad, and the remaining cultivated land was used for crops of lentils, as well as tobacco and other fruit trees.

Iqrit was captured on 31 October 1948 by the Haganah's Oded Brigade during Operation Hiram, an Israeli offensive which advanced on the coastal road towards Lebanon.

[citation needed] On Christmas Day 1951, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed the village, including its residences and churches.

[21] Several prominent Israeli cultural and artistic figures supported the movement to repatriate the Iqrit villagers and public empathy for their plight was widespread.

In 1972, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir stated: It is not only consideration of security [that prevents] an official decision regarding Bi'rim and Iqrit, but the desire to avoid [setting] a precedent.

[7]Meron Benvenisti noted in 2000 how it has been argued that the villagers of Iqrit and Bi'rim are not the only present absentees in Israel, and therefore recognizing their right of return is perceived as setting a "dangerous precedent" that would be followed by similar demands from other displaced persons.

[citation needed] Iqrit is among the demolished Palestinian villages for which commemorative Marches of Return have taken place, such as those organized by the Association for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced.

[26][27] Following the war, the area was incorporated into the State of Israel and a number of new Jewish villages were established there, two of them partially on Iqrit's land: Shomera (1949; built mainly on the ruins of Tarbikha), and Even Menachem (1960).