Nabi Salih

Nabi Salih (Arabic: النبي صالح) is a small Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank, located 20 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. It had over 530 inhabitants in 2007.

History

In 1596 the village appeared (with the name Dayr Salih) in the Ottoman tax registers as being in the nahiya of Quds in the liwa of Quds. It had a population of 2 households, both Muslim. Taxes were paid on wheat, barley, summer crops and occasional revenues

The French explorer Victor Guérin visited the place both in 1863 and 1870, and he estimated that the village had 150 inhabitants. An Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that "Nebi Salih" had 5 houses and a population of 22, though the population count included only men. In The Survey of Western Palestine (1882), Neby Saleh was described as "a village of moderate size on a ridge, with a small mosque and a well to the south. A spring exists about three-quarters of a mile east."

Shrine of Salih

Local tradition identifies the blue-color-domed building complex in the village with the shrine of the prophet Salih (Biblical Shelah). The modern structure was built in the 19th-century during Ottoman rule. The building included a zawiya, a Sufi lodging space and was guarded by a watchman. It was situated on the remains of a Crusader structure, which was presumably built atop the ruins of a Byzantine-era church. The remains of the Crusader-Byzantine structure, include apses of a three-aisle chapel located behind the shrine complex.

The Nabi Salih shrine was the most important religious structure, out of 16 different edifices, in the Bani Zeid region. It served as a gathering place for families during two rites of passage for their young sons: collective circumcisions and first hair cuts. These events were followed by celebratory picnics and games. Coinciding with Easter Week celebrated by the local Christians, Muslims from the area would visit the Nabi Salih shrine and from there would depart for the annual procession to the Aqsa Mosque (along with the Haram ash-Sharif) and the Nabi Musa ("Prophet Moses") shrine south of Jericho. The inhabitants of the al-Salihiyah neighborhood of Damascus, who claimed descent from the Abbasids, regarded Nabi Salih as the site of their eponym and would travel there to commemorate the site. It was at Nabi Salih that hundreds of men from Deir Ghassaneh and other villages of the Bani Zeid sheikhdom would interact with the wider Arabic-speaking Muslim community from Palestine and the Levant.

In 2003, under the supervision of architect Yara al-Sharif, the complex was restored. It cost $63,000, primarily funded by Sweden. The prayer hall and tomb room are owned by the Islamic waqf authority, but is rented by the Nabi Salih Cultural Centre. Currently, the complex is composed of three floors (including an underground floor) containing the tomb, a large prayer room, an olive press, a water well, a classroom, a multipurpose hall, a double-vaulted lecture room, a courtyard and two front and back terraces. All entrances are semi-circular pointed arches. The An Nabi Salih Cultural Centre serves as the most significant structure in the village.

Weekly protests

Nabi Salih's residents have hosted weekly demonstrations for three years in protest at the confiscation of the village's lands and the takeover of their spring by the nearby Israeli settlement, Halamish. During the protests, there are regular clashes with the Israeli Army who attempt to disperse crowds by using teargas, skunk water, rubber bullets, sound grenades, and other dispersal methods while Palestinian youth respond by hurling stones. The Israeli authorities have repressed the residents using tactics such as night incursions targeting homes and arrests of alleged stone throwers. On December 11, 2011, Mustafa Tamimi was shot in the face by a teargas canister at close range and later died from his injury, becoming the first resident of Nabi Salih to be killed during a demonstration. The following day, a large group of protesters marched to the entrance of Halamish to commemorate Tamimi, but were stopped by the Israeli Army which arrested 15 demonstrators including Palestinians, Israelis and internationals.

Demonstrators in Nabi Salih, May 2011

Bassem al-Tamimi, one of the leaders of the protests, has been arrested twelve times by Israeli forces, at one point spending more than three years in administrative detention#Israel without trial. His most recent arrest took place on March 2011, when he was charged with sending youths to throw stones, holding a march without a permit, incitement, and perverting the course of justice; an Israeli military court found him guilty of the former two charges and not guilty of the latter. His arrest drew international attention, with the European Union describing him as a "human rights defender", and Amnesty International designating him a prisoner of conscience.

On 19 November 2012 Rushdi Tamimi, a 28-year old Palestinian protester, was killed by Israeli fire during a demonstration in Nabi Salih in solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip in light of the recent Israeli offensive against the territory, Operation Pillar of Cloud.

B'Tselem reports

In February 2011, B'Tselem volunteers filmed Israeli soldiers coming to the homes of Arab residents, waking and photographing children. A B'Tselem report released in September 2011 accused Israel’s security forces of infringing the rights of the Palestinian demonstrators in Nabi Saleh.

On 31 August 2012 Two demonstrators at the village were injured by bullets when IDF soldiers fired warning shots in the air during a protest gathering. The IDF undertook to investigate and said that soldiers were reacting to stone-throwing.

Geography

Palestinian protesters clashing with Israeli forces near Nabi Salih, 2011

The village is situated at an elevation of 570 meters above sea level along the mountainous chain running down the West Bank in southern Samaria. Nabi Salih is located 20 kilometers northwest the cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh. It is adjacent of the Beit Rima part of Bani Zeid in the northwest. Other nearby localities include Kafr Ein in the north, Deir as-Sudan to the northeast, 'Abud to the west, and Deir Nidham to the southwest.

In a 1945 land and population survey by Sami Hadawi, Nabi Salih had a total land area of 2,846 dunams, of which 2,797 was Arab-owned, the remainder public-owned. The built-up area of the village only constituted 11 dunams, while 735 dunams were planted with olive groves.

Ein al-Qaws Spring

Near the village the is a natural spring named Ein al-Qaws ("the Bow Spring") which is owned by an individual of the village, Bashir Tamimi. In 2009 settlers from the nearby illegal settlement of Halamish took control over the spring and its surroundings and prevented Palestinian access to their land. Subsequently, people of Nabi Salih and the nearby village of Dir Nizam began regular Friday protests for the spring, and against the Israeli occupation in general.

Demographics

The most prominent family in Nabi Salih is Tamimi. In a 1922 survey by the British Mandate of Palestine, there were 105 people living in Nabi Salih, rising to 144 in the 1931 census. In Hadawi's survey, Nabi Salih had 170 inhabitants in 1945. In 1961, the population was 337, but decreased substantially after the Six-Day War in 1967, due to residents fleeing the site towards other Palestinian localities or Jordan. In 1982, the population reached 179.

In the 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Nabi Salih had a population of 371. Palestinian refugees constituted just 4.3% of the inhabitants. According to the PCBS, the village had a population of 524 inhabitants in mid-year 2006. The 2007 PCBS census recorded a population of 534.

Notable residents

• Ahlam Tamimi, accomplice in the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing. Ben Ehrenreich of The New York Times said that she was "much-loved in Nabi Saleh."
• Bassem Tamimi, activist for the Palestinian cause

See also

• Nabi Samwil

Bibliography

• Bussow, Johann (2011). Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872-1908. BRILL. ISBN 9004205691.
• Conder, Claude Reignier; Kitchener, H. H. (1882). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. Vol. 2. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• 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.
• Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah (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.
• E. Mills, 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.
• A. Socin (1879). "Alphabetisches Verzeichniss von Ortschaften des Paschalik Jerusalem". Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins. 2: 135–163.

External links

• Nabi Salih Factsheet, ARIJ
• Nabi Salih profile, ARIJ
• Nabi Salih areal photo, ARIJ
• Mighty Israel and its quest to quash Palestinian popular protest The military has delegated its best soldiers, investigators and judges to safeguarding Israel against the organizer of Nabi Saleh's popular uprising, by Amira Hass, 28.03.11, Haaretz
• Brian Wood. Nabi Saleh village, Palestine
• Nabi Saleh, from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
• An Nabi Saleh, from ISM