Even though the political implications were clear, the local Arabs welcomed the new Jewish villages, as this Palestine Post article shows:
The village was integral in the 1948 war, repulsing Egyptian attacks even before Israel declared its independence:
And the attacks continued, as Kfar Darom was the first line of defense against the Egyptian army. And the members were nothing short of heroic against a much larger and better-equipped enemy.
Unfortunately, Kfar Darom's isolation made it impossible to hold on to it, and the village was abandoned later in 1948.
But Jews are compared to the moon, where every month it appears to disappear only to come back again. And the members of the 1946 incarnation of Kfar Darom founded a new village a year later in the Negev:
