Beitillu ( ar, بيت إللو) is a
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
town located in the
Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the northern
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
, 19 kilometers Northwest of
Ramallah. According to the
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS; ar, الجهاز المركزي للإحصاء الفلسطيني) is the official
statistical institution of the State of Palestine. Its main task is to provide credible statistical figures ...
, it had a population of approximately 3,083 in mid-year 2006
Presently much of the villagers' traditional land, springs, gardens with olive and fig trees, near the
Israeli settlement of
Nachliel cannot be accessed, because their way is barred by Israeli soldiers or settlers, often with dogs.
[
Beitillu, together with Deir 'Ammar and Jammala, form the new town of ]Al-Ittihad Al-Ittihad (Arabic: الاتحاد "The Union"), sometimes transliterated as Al-Etihad or Al-Ettihad may refer to:
Sports Football Libya
*Al-Ittihad Club (Tripoli), a football club based in Bab Ben Gashier
* Al Ittihad Gheryan, a football club bas ...
.[Al-Itihad Town Profile (Beitillu, Jammala & Deir 'Ammar)]
ARIJ, pp. 4-5
Location of Al-Ittihad
Al-Itihad is located northwest of Ramallah. Al-Itihad is bordered by Kobar
Kobar ( ar, كوبر) is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the northern West Bank. Kobar is located at an altitude of above sea level with a mean annual rainfall of 669.8 mm. The average annual temperature is 1 ...
and Al-Zaytouneh to the east, Deir Abu Mash'al, Deir Nidham
Deir Nidham ( ar, دير نظام) is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank. It is located approximately northwest of the city of Ramallah and its elevation is . According to the Palestinian Centra ...
and 'Abud to the north, Shabtin
Shabtin is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank.
Location
Shabtin is located north-west of Ramallah. Shabtin is bordered by Al Itihad to the east, Shuqba to the north, Ni'lin to the ...
and Deir Qaddis
Deir Qaddis ( ar, دير قديس) is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of the State of Palestine, in the central West Bank, located sixteen kilometers west of Ramallah.
In 1863 Guérin estimated that ''Deir Kaddis'' ha ...
to the west, and Ras Karkar
Ras Karkar ( ar, رأس كركر) is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located northwest of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the town had a populat ...
, Kharbatha Bani Harith
Kharbatha Bani Harith ( ar, خربثا بني حارث) is a Palestinian town in the central West Bank, located 15 kilometers west of Ramallah in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. The name of the town is probably a corruption of Khirbat Bani H ...
, Al-Zaytouneh and Al Janiya
Al-Janiya ( ar, الجانيه) is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate located 8 kilometers northwest of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the village ha ...
to the south.[
]
History
Sherds from Iron Age II
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly a ...
/ Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
, Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
, Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
, Umayyad
The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE; , ; ar, ٱلْخِلَافَة ٱلْأُمَوِيَّة, al-Khilāfah al-ʾUmawīyah) was the second of the four major caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. The caliphate was ruled by the ...
, Crusader, Ayyubid and Mamluk
Mamluk ( ar, مملوك, mamlūk (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural), translated as "one who is owned", meaning " slave", also transliterated as ''Mameluke'', ''mamluq'', ''mamluke'', ''mameluk'', ''mameluke'', ''mamaluke'', or ''marmeluke'') ...
era have been found at Beitillu.
Yoel Elitzur asserts that the name Beitilu may be derived from "Bethel", the name of several Israelite
The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.
The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...
settlements of the Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
, including the well-known Bethel in Benjamin and another one listed in Judah. He proposed that Beitilu might be the site of Bethel in Mount Ephraim
Mount Ephraim ( he, הר אפרים), or alternately Mount of Ephraim, was the historical name for the central mountainous district of Israel once occupied by the Tribe of Ephraim (), extending from Bethel to the plain of Jezreel. In Joshua's time ...
, which the Book of Judges
The Book of Judges (, ') is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom ...
(4:5) mentions as being close to the Palm of Deborah
According to the Book of Judges, Deborah ( he, דְּבוֹרָה, ''Dəḇōrā'', "bee") was a prophetess of the God of the Israelites, the fourth Judge of pre-monarchic Israel and the only female judge mentioned in the Bible. Many scholars ...
.
Ottoman era
Beitillu appeared in the 1596 Ottoman tax registers as Bayt Illu, in the ''Nahiya
A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...
'' of Quds of the '' Liwa'' of Quds. It had a population of 30 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees, vineyards and fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 14,500 Akçe.[Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 114]
In 1838 ''Beit Ello'' was noted as Muslim village in the ''Beni Harith'' district, north of Jerusalem.
French explorer Victor Guérin
Victor Guérin (15 September 1821 – 21 Septembe 1890) was a French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included Greece, Asia Min ...
visited ''Beit-Illou'' in 1870, and he estimated that the village had about 800 inhabitants. He also noted that it had "magnificent trees" to the north.[Guérin, 1875, pp]
85
86 Guérin´s population estimate fits well with an official Ottoman village list from about 1870, which showed that ''Beit Oula'' had 100 houses and a population of 430, although it only counted the men.
In 1882, the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine
The PEF Survey of Palestine was a series of surveys carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) between 1872 and 1877 for the Survey of Western Palestine and in 1880 for the Survey of Eastern Palestine. The survey was carried out after the ...
'' described Beit Ello as a "village of moderate size on high ground, among olives, with a well to the south-east, and a spring and a tank on the north-east".
In 1896 the population of ''Bet Illo'' was estimated to be about 588 persons.
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, ''Baitilla'' had a population of 252 Muslims,[Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramallah, p]
16
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to a population of 440, still all Muslim, in 98 houses.[Mills, 1932, p]
47
/ref>
In the 1945 statistics the population of Beitillu was 490 Muslims,[Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p]
26
/ref> with 13,409 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. 5,825 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 1,681 dunams for cereals, while 58 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
Jordanian era
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Beitillu was under Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
ian rule from 1948 until 1967.
In 1961, the population was 1,535 persons.
post-1967
Beitillu came under Israeli occupation
Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to a ...
after the 1967 Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Ju ...
. The population in the 1967 census conducted by the Israeli authorities was 848, of whom 174 originated from the Israeli territory.
After the 1995 accords, 41.2% of Al-Ittihad Al-Ittihad (Arabic: الاتحاد "The Union"), sometimes transliterated as Al-Etihad or Al-Ettihad may refer to:
Sports Football Libya
*Al-Ittihad Club (Tripoli), a football club based in Bab Ben Gashier
* Al Ittihad Gheryan, a football club bas ...
‘s land was classified as Area B
The Palestinian enclaves are areas in the West Bank designated for Palestinians under a variety of U.S. and Israeli-led proposals to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The enclaves are often compared to the nominally self-governing black ...
and the remaining 58.8% as Area C. Israel has confiscated 858 dunams of land from Al-Ittihad for the construction of 4 Israeli settlements
Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli se ...
: Nahl'iel, Na'aleh, Talmon and Hallamish.[Al-Itihad Town Profile (Beitillu, Jammala & Deir 'Ammar)]
ARIJ, pp. 16-17
Much of the villagers' traditional land, springs, gardens with olive and fig trees, near the Israeli settlement of Nachliel cannot be accessed, according to Amira Hass, because their way is barred by soldiers or settlers, often with dogs:-
This has been going on for years. Gradually, ever-expanding rings of grazing land and rows of groves have become inaccessible to residents of the Beitillu and Deir Ammar villages.'[ Amira Hass]
'Uprooting Palestinian trees - and lives,'
at Haaretz, 16 July 2012
One villager complained:
“I have 200 olive trees, 500 fig trees and 300 vines there. I can’t even pick a single fig,” stated a Palestinian farmer who looks older than his age; he spoke without cynicism, and with much pain. “They aren’t killing me, but they are killing my heart.”
In February 2011, three Beitillu houses were vandalised by anonymous graffiti artists who painted slogans like 'Muhammad is a pig' on their walls, probably as a price tag policy
The price tag attack policy ( he, מדיניות תג מחיר), also sometimes referred to as "mutual responsibility" (), is the name originally given to the attacks and acts of vandalism committed primarily in the occupied West Bank by Isr ...
retaliation for the forced evacuation of a settler outpost near Kiryat Arba
:''This article is mainly about the modern Israeli settlement, not the biblical town''
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba ( he, קִרְיַת־אַרְבַּע, , Town of the Four) is an urban Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron, in the south ...
.[Elior Levy]
'Muhammad is a pig' scribbled on Palestinian homes,'
at Ynet
Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the '' Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...
, 13 February 2011.
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Welcome To Beitillu
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 14:
IAA
Wikimedia commons
AL-Itihad Town (Fact Sheet)
Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem
The Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ; ar, معهد الابحاث التطبيقية - القدس) is a Palestinian NGO founded in 1990 with its main office in Bethlehem in the West Bank. ARIJ is actively working on research proje ...
(ARIJ)
Al-Itihad Town Profile (Beitillu, Jammala & Deir 'Ammar)
ARIJ
Al-Itihad aerial photo
ARIJ
Ruining 32 Olive Trees in Beitillu – Ramallah Governorate
25, May, 2011, POICA
{{Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate
Villages in the West Bank
Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate
Municipalities of the State of Palestine