Huwara

For the town in north Jordan, see Huwwarah.

Huwara (Arabic: حُوّاره, ḥuwwarah, ) is a Palestinian town located in the Nablus Governorate of the northern West Bank, 9 kilometres (6 mi) south of Nablus and forms an enclave between four Israeli settlements. It is approximately 4 miles (6 km) from Jacob's Well. As part of the West Bank Closures system, the town contained the main Israeli checkpoint, Huwwara Checkpoint, to enter the nearby city of Nablus, until 2011 when the IDF decided to dismantle it in order to ease traffic between Nablue and Ramallah. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 5,800 in 2006.

The first elementary school was established in 1947, the school was converted into secondary school in 1962, the first female elementary school was established in 1957. Huwara Elementary as well as secondary schools serves infants from neighboring villages up to the present time.

Huwara contains four major clans. The main clan is the Odeh clan, which contains many families including the Mohammad, the Shaaweet, the Shhada, and Sleem. The second major clan is Ethmedeh.

History

Huwara is an ancient site, and cisterns and graves in rock have been found, together with remains of columns.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Hawara was inhabited by Muslims.

Ottoman era

The village was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 87 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats and/or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes.

In the 1850s the Ottoman rulers withdrew their soldiers from the district (to be used in the Crimean War), and hence open hostility could ensue between different Palestinian factions. In 1853, Huwara was engaged in a battle with the neighboring villages of Quza and Beita which left ten men and seven women dead.

The French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village in 1870. He found the village, (which he called Haouarah), to have about 800 inhabitants, and that it was divided into two districts, each administered by a sheikh. A wali was dedicated to Abou en-Nebyh Sahin.

In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Huwarah as a village "of stone and mud at the foot of Gerizim, just over the main road. It has an appearance of antiquity, and covers a considerable extent of ground".

British Mandate period

In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Huwara had a population of 921, all Muslims, increasing slightly in the 1931 census, where Huwara (together with the smaller location Bir Quza) had 240 occupied houses and a population of 955, still all Muslims.

In 1945 Huwwara had a population of 1,300, all Arabs, with 7,982 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 607 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 4,858 used for cereals, while 129 dunams were built-up land.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Huwara has been the target of price tag policy, that is random acts violence against them by Israeli Jewish settlers. In April 2010, settlers torched three Palestinian vehicles in Huwara, while on 27 February 2011, in a price-tag operation against the evacuation of Havat Gilad, settlers threw molotov cocktails at a house in the village. In March 2012 a star of David was sprayed on a village mosque.

See also

• Huwwara Checkpoint
• List of Israeli price tag attacks

References

Bibliography

• Avneri, Arieh L. (1984). The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land-settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-87855-964-7.
• Barron, J. B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922. Government of Palestine.
• Conder, Claude Reignier; Kitchener, Herbert H. (1882). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. Vol. 2. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• Ellenblum, Ronnie (2003), Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521521874 {{citation}}: External link in |title= (help)
• Finn, James (1878). Elizabeth Anne Finn (ed.). Stirring Times: Or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856. Vol. 1. London. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editorlink= ignored (|editor-link= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Guérin, Victor (1874). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine. Vol 2: Samarie, pt. 1.
• Guérin, Victor (1875). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine. Vol 2: Samarie, pt. 2.
• Hadawi, Sami (1970), Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center
• Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft.
• Mills, E., ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas (PDF). Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
• Palmer, E. H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• Schölch, Alexander (1993). Palestine in Transformation, 1856-1882: Studies in Social, Economic, and Political Development. Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0-88728-234-2.

External links

• Howwarah Municipality
• Welcome To Huwwara
• The Burning of Tens of Dunums by Barakha Colonists 06, August, 2010, ARIJ
• Huwara, Unipal