Beit Hanina

Basic Information

Type

Town

Governorate

Jerusalem

Region

Jerusalem

Overview

Beit Hanina is one of the largest and historically most significant Palestinian villages in the Jerusalem area, now incorporated into the expanded Jerusalem municipality. Located 8 km north of the Old City at 780 meters elevation, it has been continuously inhabited since ancient times and is identified with biblical Ananiah of the Tribe of Benjamin (Nehemiah 11:32). The village was known for its extensive olive groves, fig orchards, and agricultural terraces that covered the hillside slopes. In 1596, Ottoman tax registers recorded 29 households. By 1945, the village had 3,590 residents on 14,233 dunams. After 1967, Israel expanded Jerusalem's municipal boundaries to include Beit Hanina, but the village's fate took a devastating turn with the construction of the separation wall, which split the community in two. Al-Jadida (the 'new' Beit Hanina, within the wall and Jerusalem municipality) houses most of the 27,769 residents counted in 2007, while al-Balad (the 'old' village, outside the wall) was cut off from the city with only 1,107 residents remaining. The wall runs through the middle of the village, separating families, cutting farmers from their lands, and creating two distinct administrative regimes for what was once a unified community. Settlement construction — Pisgat Ze'ev, Ramot, and Ramat Shlomo — has consumed thousands of dunams of Beit Hanina's agricultural land.

Historical Significance

Believed to be the biblical Ananiah of the Tribe of Benjamin. Site of an 1800-year-old Roman road discovered in 2013.

Sources and record limitations

Source detail varies by record. Some entries include document and page references; others supply source names only. Check the cited material and the record's limitations before relying on a specific claim.

• Ir Amim
• B'Tselem
• UN OCHA
• ARIJ
• PCBS
• BADIL Resource Center

Wealthier Palestinian neighborhood