According to the people of Beit Fajjar, they came from Bethlehem due to a conflict in the town, and settled at Beit Fajjar in 1784,[8] or 1738.[3]
Edward Robinson noted the village on his travels in the area in 1838,[9] as a Muslim village in the Hebron district.[10] According to Kark and Oren-Nordheim, Beit Fajjar was mostly farmland until the 19th century, when it gradually transformed into an urban settlement. The residents were descendants to a semi-nomadic family from the Hauran. The lands formerly belonged to the village of Buraikut.[7]
Victor Guérin visited the village in 1863, and described it as a village on the top of a hill, with about 400 people. The villagers still buried their dead in rock-cut tombs, below the village.[11] An Ottoman village list of about 1870 indicated 27 houses and a population of 81, though the population count included only men.[12][13]
In the 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine, Beit Fejjar was described as a "small stone village standing very high on a ridge. It is supplied by the fine springs and spring wells of Wady el Arrub".[14]
In 1896 the population of Bet faddscar was estimated to be about 624 persons.[15]
British Mandate era
The site's high altitude was the highest point in the area and later the town expanded into other hills. During British rule in Palestine in the 1920s-1940s, Beit Fajjar was used as an observation point for the Bethlehem-Hebron area.[16]
In the 1945 statistics the population of Beit Fajjar was 1,480, all Muslims,[19] who owned 17,292 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.[20] 2,572 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,633 for cereals,[21] while 87 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[22]
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Beit Fajjar has been under Israeli occupation. The population in the 1967 census conducted by the Israeli authorities was 2,474.[24]
The former head of Beit Fajjar's local council, Saber Mohammed Abdul Latif, testified to United Nations representatives that after his arrest on November 1, 1969, how Beit Fajjar had been besieged for about four months, no water had been allowed in and some 70 houses had been blown up. Abdul Latif was then deported on August 28, 1970.[25]
After the 1995 accords, 85.7% of Beit Fajjar land was classified as Area B land, while the remaining 14.3% is Area C.[26]
Nibal Thawabteh was the first woman to be elected to the Beit Fajjar Village Council, where she served for seven years.[27]
Economy
The primary economic sectors are agriculture and stone-cutting. Beit Fajjar is a major player in the stone industry, supplying meleke, widely known as Jerusalem stone, used in the construction of buildings in Israel and the Palestinian territories.[16] There are 138 stone production outlets in Beit Fajjar, out of 650 in the West Bank.[28] After about 1998, the Palestinian quarry owners have experienced difficulties in renewing their permits. According to HRW, while "Israel issued a permit to the European company to operate the quarry on an area of land that Israel declared belongs to the state, Israel has refused to issue permits for nearly all of the 40 or so Beit Fajar quarries, or for almost any other Palestinian-owned quarry in the area of the West Bank under Israel’s administrative control."[29]
Arab-Israeli conflict
On 4 October 2010, a mosque in Beit Fajjar was attacked by arsonists, who doused carpets with kerosene and ignited them at approximately 3am local time. The attackers left a "Star of David symbol and the words 'Price Tag'" over the doorway; the slogan is associated with militant Israeli settlers, who Palestinian residents accused of responsibility for the attack. Gush Etzion is close to the village.[30] After the attack, a delegation of Rabbis from the adjacent Jewish settlements arranged with Beit Fajjar leadership and the PA security and visited the mosque in solidarity, while condemning the arson attack.[31]
On October 30, 2015, the PA health ministry reported that an 8 month old boy from Beit Fajjar had died after inhaling tear gas fired by the IDF during violent clashes[32]
In July, 2019, 30 (or 31) year old Nassar Taqatqa from Beit Fajjar was found dead in Israeli solitary confinement. He had been arrested by the Israelis six weeks earlier, suspected of "ties to Hamas", but had not been charged with anything.[33] The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) and the man’s relatives stated that Taqatqa was a "completely healthy" young man when he was detained by the Israelis. According to IMEMC, the death of Taqatqa brought "the number of [Palestinian] detainees, who were killed or died in Israeli prisons since 1967, to 220."[34][35]
^The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, 2010, p. 5 [1]
^ abGrossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 366
