Huwara

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, part of Nablus Sanjak. It had a population of 87 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on various products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats and/or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes, in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 14,000 akçe.[9]

In 1838, Robinson described Huwara as a "large and old village".[10] It was also noted as a Muslim village, in Jurat Merda, south of Nablus.[11]

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.[12] In 1853, Huwara was engaged in a battle with the neighboring villages of Quza and Beita which left ten men and seven women dead.[13]

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 oualy was dedicated to Abou en-Nebyh Sahin.[14]

In 1882, the PEF'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".[15]

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Huwara had a population of 921, all Muslims,[16] 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.[17]

In the 1945 statistics Huwwara had a population of 1,300, all Muslims,[18] with 7,982 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[19] Of this, 607 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 4,858 used for cereals,[20] while 129 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[21]

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

Entrance to Huwwara Checkpoint

In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Huwara came under Jordanian rule. The first elementary school was converted into secondary school in 1962. The first female elementary school was established in 1957.

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 1,966 inhabitants.[22]

Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Huwara has been under Israeli occupation.

After the 1995 accords, 38% of Huwwara land was classified as Area B, the remaining 62% as Area C.[23] Israel has confiscated 282 dunams of Huwwara land for the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar.[24]

Huwara has been the target of price tag attacks, random acts violence by Israeli Jewish settlers. According to the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC), in April 2010 settlers torched three Palestinian vehicles in Huwara,[25] while on 27 February 2011, in a price-tag attack against the evacuation of Havat Gilad, settlers threw molotov cocktails at a house in the village.[26] In March 2012 a Star of David was sprayed on a village mosque.[27] In March 2013, in another price-tag attack, Jewish settlers descended on Huwara in the hours after the Borovsky killing- a Tapuach junction stabbing Palestinian terror attack. They attacked a bus carrying Palestinian schoolgirls with stones, shattering a wind-shield and wounding the driver.[28]

In October 2014, during the olive harvest season,[29] a fire razed to the ground huge swathes of Palestinian-owned agricultural land between the village of Hawara, near Nablus and the Yitzhar settlement in the West Bank, destroying over a hundred olive trees.[30] Although the cause of the fire has been contested, the mayor of Huwara claimed masked men from nearby Yitzhar and surrounding settlements set the fire by pouring incendiary fluids on the trees[30] and that the Israeli occupation forces prevented Palestinian citizens from reaching the lands in order to extinguish the fire. Later on, the Israeli forces allowed the civil defence from the adjacent Palestinian village of Burin to extinguish the fire, but only after it had expanded to an even larger area .[31] The burning and damaging of olive trees is an ongoing-concern of the United Nations,[25] a pattern the New York Times call "price tag" attacks.[32] The United Nations has reported that by 2013 "...Israeli settlers damaged or destroyed nearly 11,000 olive trees owned by the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank."[29][33]

North of Huwara, was the Huwwara Checkpoint, one of the Israeli checkpoints around Nablus, dismantled in 2011 in order to ease traffic between Nablus and Ramallah.[34]

Its location on the main road, used by both Israelis from four Israeli settlements in the Nablus area and Palestinians from the Nablus area, is a controlling factor of the life in Huwara. The town has many businesses located on the road, which is controlled by the Israeli army to ensure free passage to Jews and Arabs.[35]

On May 18, 2017, an Israeli settler from Itamar driving through Huwara was attacked by stone throwers. The settler used his firearm, killing one and wounding another.[36]