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Beit Iksa ( ar, بيت إكسا;) is a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem Governorate, located northwest of
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
in the
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 ...
. The village is surrounded on all sides by the Israeli West Bank barrier, and outside Palestinians are denied access through the one Israeli checkpoint leading to it. In 2014 Israeli military authorities announced they would confiscate a further 3,167 acres of Beit Iksa lands, leaving the township, according to the village head, Saada al-Khatib, as a 2,500-dunum area. Beit Iksa contains two primary schools run by the
Palestinian National Authority The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine,
. Students attending secondary school travel to Jerusalem or nearby towns for education.


Location

Beit Iksa is a Palestinian village located (horizontally) north-west of
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. It is bordered by Beit Hanina al Balad and Shu'fat to the east, An Nabi Samwil to the north,
Beit Surik Beit Surik ( ar, بيت سوريك) is a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem Governorate, located 12 kilometers Northwest of Jerusalem in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population ...
and Lifta to the west.


History

Beit Iksa lies on one of the historical routes that joined the Mediterranean coastal plain with Jerusalem, and archeological excavations have yielded remains from 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 ...
, Early
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 lett ...
, late
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 ...
and
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 ...
periods. An alternative name for the site was Umm el-'Ela.Sharon, 1999, pp
105
-108
During the Crusader period, the village was known as ''Jenanara'', according to its inhabitants.


Ottoman era

In 1517, the village was incorporated into the
Ottoman empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...
with the rest of Palestine, and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared under the name of ''Bayt Kisa'', located in the ''
Nahiye 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 Jerusalem in the ''
Sanjak Sanjaks (liwāʾ) (plural form: alwiyāʾ) * Armenian: նահանգ (''nahang''; meaning "province") * Bulgarian: окръг (''okrǔg''; meaning "county", "province", or "region") * el, Διοίκησις (''dioikēsis'', meaning "province" ...
'' of the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem. It had a population of 79 households, all
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s. The inhabitants paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees, vineyards, fruit trees, orchard, goats or bee hives, and a press for olives or grapes; a total of 18,000
akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (also spelled ''akche'', ''akcheh''; ota, آقچه; ) refers to a silver coin which was the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. The word itself evolved from the word "silver or silver money", this word is der ...
.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 121. In 1838, Beit Iksa was noted as a Muslim village, part of the ''
El-Kuds Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
'' district.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p.
121
/ref> In 1841 a local leader ('' nāzir''), ''Abd al-Qadir al-Khatib'', built an Ottoman castle located in the southern part of the village, while one of his brother built a smaller version five years later. In 1863, the 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 ...
passed by the village and was told it had 300 inhabitants. He noted that the surroundings were cultivated with vines and olive trees. An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that "Bet Iksa" had 70 houses and a population of 147, though the population count included only men. According to
Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau (19 February 1846 – 15 February 1923) was a noted French Orientalist and archaeologist. Biography Clermont-Ganneau was born in Paris, the son of Simon Ganneau, a sculptor and mystic who died in 1851 when Clerm ...
, he was informed in 1874 that the inhabitant belonged to the Beni Zeid
tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...
and that the village earlier had been named ''Umm el Ela''. In 1883, the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' described it as a "village of moderate size, with stone houses, and a well on the north, near which is a tree sacred to an otherwise unknown prophet, Nabī Leimûun. There are a few olives round the village." Around 1896 the population of Beit Iksa was estimated to be about 714 persons.


British Mandate era

In the
1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divis ...
conducted by the British Mandate authorities, "Bait Iksa" had a population of 791, all
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s,Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Jerusalem, p
14
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to a population of 1003, in 221 houses.Mills, 1932, p
38
/ref> In the 1945 statistics, Beit Iksa had a population of 1,410, all Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
24
/ref> with 8,179
dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amou ...
s of land, according to an official land and population survey.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
56
/ref> Of this, 1,427 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,690 used for cereals, while 43 dunams were built-up (urban) land.


Jordanian era

In April 1948, most of the villagers fled following the fall of
Deir Yassin Deir Yassin ( ar, دير ياسين, Dayr Yāsīn) was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 inhabitants about west of Jerusalem. Deir Yassin declared its neutrality during the 1948 Palestine war between Arabs and Jews. The village was razed ...
and the
Haganah Haganah ( he, הַהֲגָנָה, lit. ''The Defence'') was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the I ...
entered the village destroying many buildings. In the wake of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had ...
, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Beit Iksa came under Jordanian rule. It was annexed by Jordan in 1950. In 1961, the population of Beit Iksa was 1,177.


After 1967

Since the
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 ...
in 1967, Beit Iksa has been under
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
i occupation. After the 1995 accords, 7.4% of village 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 ...
, the remaining 92.6% as Area C. Over half of the land lies beyond the confines of the West Bank separation barrier.Beit Iksa Village Profile
ARIJ, p. 16
Village Profiles: Profile of Beit Iksa, Jerusalem
United Nations Relief and Works Agency. January 2004.
The majority of the present population came to the village as refugees in the wake of the Six Day War, when its original inhabitants were forced to flee. In November 2014, Israeli authorities delivered a notification to the village, declaring the intention of confiscating 12,852 dunums (3,176 acres) of their land, including the areas of Haraeq al-Arab, Thahr Biddu, Numus, and Khatab. The given reason for the confiscation states that the land is required "for military purposes". Landholders were given until 31 December 2017 to remain on their land.'Israel to confiscate 3,200 acres of Palestinian land near Jerusalem,'
a'an News Agency 8 November 2014.
Israeli settlements, including Ramot, have been built on 1,500 dunums (371 acres) on village land, and according to the village major, the order came through after the Israel government announced plans for a further 244 housing units to be built in Ramot. In addition, Israel has confiscated 15 dunums for the Israeli settlement of ''Har Samuel'', part of the Giv'at Ze'ev settlement.


Population

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 a ...
(PCBS), Beit Iksa had a population of approximately 1,600 inhabitants in mid-year 2006. From the population, over 80% are Palestinian refugees. By 2014 the population had grown to some 1,700. According to the land researcher
Sami Hadawi Sami Hadawi ( ar, سامي هداوي; March 6, 1904 – April 22, 2004) was a Palestinian scholar and author. He is known for documenting the effects of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War on the Arab population in Palestine and publishing statistics ...
, the population grew to 1,410 in 1945. However, following
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
's occupation 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 ...
, Beit Iksa counted 633 inhabitants, due to the number of residents that fled the village. Most of the village's inhabitants hold Palestinian ID cards and live in Beit Iksa's built-up area of 417
dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amou ...
s or 5.4% of the village's total land area of 7,734 dunams.


Shrines

In the 1920, Tawfiq Canaan noted several shrines, or maqams here. Es-seh ''Mbarak''/''Imbarak'' had one in the public cemetery, with a niche, for holding oil-lamps, etc, in the northern side of the shrine. A shrine for Sheik ''Hasan'' was badly damaged during WWI. A shrine for Sheik ''Iteyim'' was also used as a ''madafeh'', or guest room, in addition to being used as a school room.Canaan, 1927, p
17
/ref>


References


Bibliography

* * * (p
222
* * * * * * * p
400
* * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Official website


*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17:
IAA
Wikimedia commons
Beit Iksa Village (Fact Sheet)
Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem, ARIJ
Beit Iksa Village Profile
ARIJ
Beit Iksa aerial photo
ARIJ
Locality Development Priorities and Needs in Beit Iksa
ARIJ

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070814103425/http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=836 May 17, 2006 :"Beit Iksa village loses its lands for the Israeli Segregation Wall"
December 8, 2006: "Beit Iksa: the making of another ghetto"

January 16, 2007 :"Israel hits Beit Iksa, Nabi Samuel and Beit Surik with new military order in favor of the Segregation Wall"


* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090809102649/http://www.imemc.org/article/61286 August 4, 2009 :"Israel annexes Palestinian village near Jerusalem"
December 17, 2010: ''Israel Decides To Confiscate 50 Dunams In East Jerusalem''

July 21, 2011: ''Troops Uproot Olive Orchards Near Jerusalem''
{{Jerusalem Governorate Villages in the West Bank Jerusalem Governorate Throne villages Municipalities of the State of Palestine