Yaroun

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

Geography
Yaroun occupies a hill with elevation ranging from 750 to 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.

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, full of cisterns, and supposed to be the site of an ancient castle ; there are large stones strewn about ; there are three large birkets and many cisterns to supply water; one of the birkets is ruined."

SWP also found here the remains of an ancient Church, with Greek inscriptions.

Lebanon
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 that string Lebanon's southern border, such as Ain Ebel, Debel, Qaouzah, and Rmaich, were caught by the 2006 Lebanon War between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces. On the 23 July, 5 civilians were killed in an Israeli strike in Yaroun; victims were aged between 6 months and 75 years old.

In October of 2023 and the months succeeding it, Yaroun was caught in the crossfire of the Israel-Hezbollah Conflict of 2023. As a result, Yaroun was subjected to numerous Israeli airstrikes and shelling, and consequently, the village now suffers from widespread damages, with numerous homes being completely destroyed. As of April 2024, its residents are displaced and access into the village is nearly impossible due to the intense and ongoing hostilities.

Religion
Yaroun is divided between Shia Muslims and Catholic Christians.

In 2009, there were 365 members of the Saint-Georges parish of the Melkite Church in the village.

Social life
While the majority of Yarounis visit Yaroun for the summer, approximately 60% to 70% of Yaroun natives reside outside of Lebanon, and include countries such as Australia, USA, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and South Africa. Due to the devastation of the Israeli occupancy, and various wars in the last 40 years, economic development has been slow in the area, resulting in younger generation Yarounis to seek higher education opportunities in other countries. However, during the summer, many families return to the region, and spend time with families left behind.

Notable persons

 * Eid Hourany (1940 – 2008), French and Lebanese nuclear physicist
 * Youssef Hourany (1931 – 2019), Lebanese writer, archeologist and historian
 * Dominique Hourani (born 1985), Lebanese recording artist, actress, beauty queen, and former model
 * Mohamad Kdouh (born 1997), Lebanese footballer