HAIFA, October 14, 2009 (WAFA)-  For the first time in 61 years, the Palestinian village of Akbara heard the call for prayer after finally being given permission to build a mosque to replace the one destroyed by Israel back in 1948 Alarabiya news said.

Nayef  Zidani  the writer said: “Since Akbara, located 2.5 kilometers from Safad, was blown up and destroyed in 1948, no mosque was built and residents used to rely on the radio to know prayer times.”

Ghazi Hulailil, member of the al-Hoda Association, which supervises the village said: 'They depended on prayer times in Jerusalem and Ramallah, They would pray in their homes and sometimes they wouldn’t even pray because there was no Mosque nearby.”

“What made things more difficult for villagers,” Hulailil added, “is that the closest city to Akbara is Safad in Israel’s Northern District which has a 99% Jewish and non-Arab population. Other cities with Arab populations and mosques were far.”

He noted: “For the Friday prayer they had to travel to a long way to other Arab cities.”

The new mosque is still not fully functioning. It lacks a minaret and there is no imam yet. Occasionally a preacher comes from one of the Arab towns to lead the worshippers in prayer and give sermons on the importance of faith.

Hulailil said: “as soon as the call for prayer sounded from the mosque, the Jewish residents a couple of kilometers away started complaining. Safad residents submitted a complaint to the municipality expressing their indignation at the noise caused by the call for prayer and calling to reprimand the villagers.”

In response, the volume of the call for prayers was turned down to the minimum to the extent that the Akbara villagers claimed they could barely hear it. However, the complaints did not stop.

Hulailil added that since 1948, Akbara villagers had been living in tents and huts until the first building was constructed in the mid 1980s.