Salfit ( ar, سلفيت) pronounced "Salfeet" 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 ...

city in the central

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 ...

, and the capital of the

Salfit Governorate Salfit governorate ( ar, محافظة سلفيت) is one of 16 Governorates of the Palestinian National Authority. It is located in the northwestern West Bank, held under Israeli occupation, bordered by the governorates of Ramallah and al-Bire ...

of the

State of Palestine Palestine ( ar, فلسطين, Filasṭīn), officially the State of Palestine ( ar, دولة فلسطين, Dawlat Filasṭīn, label=none), is a state located in Western Asia. Officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (P ...

. Salfit is located at an altitude of , adjacent to the

Israeli settlement 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 ...

of Ariel. 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), Salfit had a population of 10,911 in 2017.2017 PCBS Census

. p. 72. Since the 1995

Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip The Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip commonly known as Oslo II or Oslo 2, was a key and complex agreement in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Because Oslo II was signed in Taba, it is sometimes called the Taba Agree ...

, Salfit, located in

Area A Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while ''surface area'' refers to the area of an open s ...

, has been administered 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,

, while continuing under Israeli military occupation.

Etymology

According to the Salfit Chamber of Commerce, the word "Salfit" is a Canaanite word which means "basket of grapes" (''Sal'' meaning "basket and ''fit'' meaning "grapes").History and Development
Salfit Chamber of Commerce. Palmer in 1881 suggested the name was possible from "levelled sown field".

History

Pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...

sherd In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels, as well. Occasionally, a piece of broken p ...

s from the

Iron Age I 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 appl ...

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 appl ...

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 3 ...

, and the

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 letter ...

eras have been found, while no sherds from the

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 ...

era have been found.Finkelstein and Lederman, 1997, p. 473. According to

Ronnie Ellenblum Ronnie Ellenblum (born June 21, 1952, Haifa, Israel; died January 7, 2021, Jerusalem, Israel) was an Israeli professor at the department of geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humaniti ...

, Salfit was re-established during early Muslim rule (7th–11th centuries) and continued to exist through the Crusader period. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Salfit was inhabited by

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 Abraha ...

s. Pottery sherds from 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'') i ...

eras have also been found here.

Ottoman era

Salfit 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) ...

in 1517 with all of

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East J ...

, and sherds from the early Ottoman era have been found. In 1596 the village appeared in Ottoman tax registers under the name of ''Salfit al-Basal'' as being 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 ...

'' ("Subdistrict") of Jabal Qubal, part of the

Sanjak of Nablus The Nablus Sanjak ( ar, سنجق نابلس; tr, Nablus Sancağı) was an administrative area that existed throughout Ottoman rule in the Levant (1517–1917). It was administratively part of the Damascus Eyalet until 1864 when it became part o ...

. It had a population of 118 households and 2 bachelors, all

. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats and/or beehives, in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 7,618

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 deri ...

. In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim village, ''Selfit'', in ''Jurat Merda'', south of

Nablus Nablus ( ; ar, نابلس, Nābulus ; he, שכם, Šəḵem, ISO 259-3: ; Samaritan Hebrew: , romanized: ; el, Νεάπολις, Νeápolis) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a populati ...

.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p
127
/ref> During the Ottoman era, it served as a hub for the local villages,Lockman and Beinin, 1989, p
143
/ref> and was one of many large commercial villages in the area that served a mediating role between the administrative center of Nablus and the smaller villages. 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 ...

'', Salfit was described as "a large village, on high ground, with olive groves round it, and a pool to the east. It is apparently an ancient site with rock-cut tombs." It further noted that there were two springs to the west of the village. By 1916, towards the end of Ottoman rule in Palestine, Salfit was one of the two largest villages in the District of Nablus that produced

olive oil Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained from olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea''; family Oleaceae), a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, produced by pressing whole olives and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking: ...

. At the time there were tensions between the residents of the village and the merchants of the administrative center of

. The boys' school had about 100 pupils while the girls' school had 10 pupils. One of the reasons for the disparity was the locust attack on Salfit's crop earlier the previous year which had destroyed the village's harvest. Because of the consequent poverty and state of demise, parents kept their daughters at home to care for the family.

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, Salfit had a population of 901; 899 MuslimsBarron, 1923, Table IX, Sub-district of Nablus, p
25
/ref> and 2 Orthodox Christians,Barron, 1923, Table XV, p
47
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census, to 1,415; 1,412 Muslims and 3 Christians, occupying 331 homes.Mills, 1932, p
64
/ref> In the 1945 statistics the population was 1,830, all Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
19
/ref> while the total land area was 23,117

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 amount ...

s, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 10,853 were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 3,545 for cereals, while 100 dunams were classified as built-up areas.

Jordanian era

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, Salfit came under Jordanian rule. In 1948 Salfit was the center of the

Palestine Communist Party The Palestine Communist Party ( yi, פאלעסטינישע קומוניסטישע פארטיי, ''Palestinische Komunistische Partei'', abbreviated PKP; ar, الحزب الشيوعي الفلسطيني) was a political party in Mandatory Palest ...

. Throughout the 1950s it became a major stronghold for the communist movement and center of anti-Jordanian activity. Salfit was given

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

status in 1955. In 1961, the population of Salfit was 3,393 persons.

1967-present

Salfit has been 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 ...

since 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 Jun ...

. By 1989 Salfit was still a communist stronghold. Between the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 following the

and the

First Intifada The First Intifada, or First Palestinian Intifada (also known simply as the intifada or intifadah),The word ''intifada'' () is an Arabic word meaning " uprising". Its strict Arabic transliteration is '. was a sustained series of Palestinian ...

, the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987, a relatively large number of the town's residents, about 600 out of a population of 4,500, worked labor jobs in Israel proper and in the adjacent

of Ariel. In Salfit there was a higher proportion of laborers who worked in Israeli establishments, compared to other Palestinian towns, because of the proximity to nearby settlements and the border with Israel as well as the significantly higher wages earned.Robinson, 1997, pp
58
60. However, at the beginning of the First Intifada, nearly all workers boycotted their jobs in Israel and the following year, when many Palestinians ended their boycott, around half of the workers of Salfit refused to return to their jobs. Consequently, according to historian Glenn E. Robinson, between 1987–1989, a "virtual

green revolution The Green Revolution, also known as the Third Agricultural Revolution, was a period of technology transfer initiatives that saw greatly increased crop yields and agricultural production. These changes in agriculture began in developed countrie ...

" took hold in the town as a result of the enthusiasm generated by the "

back-to-the-land movement A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-suffic ...

," agricultural expertise and the increase in additional workers. While prior to the uprising Salfit's residents acquired the bulk of their produce from the Nablus region and Israel, during the revolt the town became self-sufficient in both tomatoes, which were not grown at all previously, and cucumbers. Other agricultural products such as potatoes, eggplants, peppers, cauliflower and beans were grown in greenhouses while those that were not grown were supplied by other Palestinian farmers. Unlike in previous years, Salfit had supplied Nablus with vegetables while that city was under Israeli

curfew A curfew is a government order specifying a time during which certain regulations apply. Typically, curfews order all people affected by them to ''not'' be in public places or on roads within a certain time frame, typically in the evening and ...

. Part of this upsurge in agricultural activity was the cultivation of about 100

s of relatively isolated lands. In response to Salfit's agricultural initiative, Israel halved the town's water supply in 1989. As a result of an Israeli military measure that closed all schools in the West Bank on 3 February 1988 for the stated purpose that they served to organize violence, a number of "popular education committees" were established. These committees held classes in lieu of the closed-down schools. Families affiliated with the conservative

Hamas Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni- Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Br ...

movement sent their children to the

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers (sujud) are performed, in ...

-based class while those leaned towards communism and secularism sent their children to a local union building. Classes held in the mosque were considered to particularly progressive because of gender integration. Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, Salfit's urban growth had mostly occurred eastward from the old town. The old town still served as a nucleus of activity in Salfit and the stone villas of the Zir and 'Afana clans still remain. In 1993, the military wing of Hamas claimed it launched its first suicide operation in Salfit. In 1995 the

(PNA), which now administered the town, created the district of Salfit gained the status of

governorate A governorate is an administrative division of a state. It is headed by a governor. As English-speaking nations tend to call regions administered by governors either states or provinces, the term ''governorate'' is often used in translation from ...

. Under the

Oslo Accords The Oslo Accords are a pair of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993;

, the city has been placed under Palestinian civil control, what is known as

. In 2021 the Israeli authorities published plans to construct 730 residential units around the illegal Israeli outpost of Nof Avi, which was established in 2020 by an Israeli couple as a farm, on what Israel declares is 'state land'. The new settlement was to be called 'West Ariel'. The establishment of such a large settlement, according to Salfit residents, would effectively block their own planned urban expansion.

Demographics

In the 1997 census by the

(PCBS) the population of Salfit was 7,101. Nearly 13% of the population were recorded as

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

s. The gender distribution was 50.6% male and 49.4% female. Over 50% of the residents were below the age of 24, while 45% were between the ages of 25-65 and the remaining 5% were over 65. In the 2007 PCBS census Salfit's population reached 8,796 and the number of households was 1,840. Males and females each constituted half of the population. The age distribution was 48.9% below the age of 20, 46.6% between ages 20–65 and 4.1% over the age of 65. Over 48% of residents over the age of 12 were married, 3.6% were widowed and less than 1% were divorced. According to the (PCBS) 2017 census, the population grew to 10,911.

Economy

Salfit is a major administrative and commercial center for the dozens of villages surrounding it. However, the route for Palestinians from Salfit's northern dependencies has been sealed off by the

Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branch ...

because of a bypass road for the settlement of Ariel crossing the main road. There are several governmental offices and institutions in the city. Education services in Salfit are provided by four modern schools in addition to the Al-Quds Open University campus. The Salfit Governorate is also an area that is well known in the field of stone cutting and marble. An industrial zone was established on 200 dunams of land at the east end of Salfit. The Salfit Governorate is the largest

producer in the

Palestinian territories The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The ...

, producing 1,500 tons annually. Zaytoun, the Palestinian Olive Tree Association, is active with Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) in Salfit to improve the quality and sales of Palestinian Olive oil. Salfit is located just across a valley to the south of the

of Ariel and around 1/3 the population of Ariel, about midway between

and

Ramallah Ramallah ( , ; ar, رام الله, , God's Height) is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank that serves as the ''de facto'' administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusa ...

On 30 May 2008 the US Consulate General in Jerusalem presented 700 books and 100 magazines for a new library at the Community-Based Learning Center in Salfit and the ceremony was attended by the PA Ministry of Youth and Sports official, Hussein Azzam, Deputy Governor of Salfit, Nawaf Souf. The Community Center is located on al-Madares Street in Salfit and was established by the Relief International Schools Online (RISOL) in 2007. The Salfit Hospital was completed in 2006. Before the closest government hospitals were in

Tulkarm Tulkarm, Tulkarem or Tull Keram ( ar, طولكرم, ''Ṭūlkarm'') is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, located in the Tulkarm Governorate of the State of Palestine. The Israeli city of Netanya is to the west, and the Palestinian cities ...

and

, all more than a one-hour's drive away.

Water treatment plant

There are a large number of water springs in and around the city but they unable to cope with the growing demand of the city. For the past nine years, the municipality has been trying to build a waste-water treatment plant to service the residents of Salfit town. In July 2007, the House of Water and Environment (HWE) of

produced a report the “Assessment of the Impact of Pollution Sources on the Water Environment and the Lives of the Residents in the Northern West Bank, Palestine”. The plant was supposed to be built on

land from the town of Salfit. The municipality received a grant of 22 million

euros The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens ...

from the German government to build the plant and a mainline pipe to the town but the

Israeli Defense Forces Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli (b ...

(IDF) stopped the construction of the building and seized all the equipment because it allegedly would interfere with the nearby

s.HWE p. 8
/ref> The equipment was returned only 18 months later. As a result, the town had to take out a loan to buy a new piece of land eight kilometers closer to its outskirts and another loan of 2 million euros to move the pipes and the electricity cables. Although Israel approved the new site of the plant, the planned

West Bank Barrier The Israeli West Bank barrier, comprising the West Bank Wall and the West Bank fence, is a separation barrier built by Israel along the Green Line and inside parts of the West Bank. It is a contentious element of the Israeli–Palestinian c ...

will now separate Salfit from the sewage plant. In May 2006, international human rights organizations were called to witness sewage of Ariel settlement running into the agriculture valleys north of the city and damaging the surrounding agriculture and environment. In June, 2016, Salfit and other towns in the area had to go without running water for weeks, as the Israeli

Mekorot Mekorot ( he, מקורות, lit. "Sources") is the national water company of Israel and the country's top agency for water management. Founded in 1937, it supplies Israel with 90% of its drinking water and operates a cross-country water supply ne ...

reduced the amount of water it sold to the Palestinians.Israel incapable of telling truth about water it steals from Palestinians
by Amira Hass, Jun. 22, 2016,

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner ...

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

Official Municipality Website

Salfit Chambers Of Commerce

Salfit City WebsiteSalfit City
Welcome to Palestine *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 14:
IAAWikimedia commons

Salfit Municipality (including Khirbet Qeis Locality) (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)
Salfit City Profile (including Khirbet Qeis Locality)
ARIJ
Salfit, aerial photo
ARIJ
Development Priorities and Needs in Salfit
ARIJ {{Authority control Cities in the West Bank Municipalities of West Bank