page_title: Salfit
section_title: 1967, aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Salfit / History / 1967, aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: 2018 OCHA OpT map
context_page_description: Salfit, also spelled Salfeet, is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank. Salfit is located at an altitude of 570 meters adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Ariel. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Salfit had a population of 10,911 in 2017. It has been administered by the Palestinian Authority since the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in an area that has been classified as Area B, and has served as the administrative seat of the Salfit Governorate since then.
context_section_description: Salfit has been under  Israeli occupation since the 1967 Six-Day War.
  By 1989 Salfit was still a communist stronghold. Between the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 following the Six-Day War and the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987, a relatively large number of the town's residents, about 600 out of a population of 4,500, worked labor jobs in Israel proper and in the adjacent Israeli settlement of Ariel. In Salfit there was a higher proportion of laborers who worked in Israeli establishments, compared to other Palestinian towns, because of the proximity to nearby settlements and the border with Israel as well as the significantly higher wages earned.
  However, at the beginning of the First Intifada, nearly all workers boycotted their jobs in Israel and the following year, when many Palestinians ended their boycott, around half of the workers of Salfit refused to return to their jobs. Consequently, according to historian Glenn E. Robinson, between 1987–1989, a "virtual green revolution" took hold in the town as a result of the enthusiasm generated by the "back-to-the-land movement," agricultural expertise and the increase in additional workers. While prior to the uprising Salfit's residents acquired the bulk of their produce from the Nablus region and Israel, during the revolt the town became self-sufficient in both tomatoes, which were not grown at all previously, and cucumbers. Other agricultural products such as potatoes, eggplants, peppers, cauliflower and beans were grown in greenhouses while those that were not grown were supplied by other Palestinian farmers. Unlike in previous years, Salfit had supplied Nablus with vegetables while that city was under Israeli curfew. Part of this upsurge in agricultural activity was the cultivation of about 100 dunams of relatively isolated lands. In response to Salfit's agricultural initiative, Israel halved the town's water supply in 1989.
  As a result of an Israeli military measure that closed all schools in the West Bank on 3 February 1988 for the stated purpose that they served to organize violence, a number of "popular education committees" were established. These committees held classes in lieu of the closed-down schools. Families affiliated with the conservative Hamas movement sent their children to the mosque-based class while those leaned towards communism and secularism sent their children to a local union building. Classes held in the mosque were considered to particularly progressive because of gender integration.
  Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, Salfit's urban growth had mostly occurred eastward from the old town. The old town still served as a nucleus of activity in Salfit and the stone villas of the Zir and 'Afana clans still remain.
  In 1993, the military wing of Hamas claimed it launched its first suicide operation in Salfit. In 1995 the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which now administered the town, created the district of Salfit gained the status of governorate. Under the Oslo Accords, the city has been placed under Palestinian civil control, what is known as Area A.
caption: 2018 United Nations map of the area, showing the Israeli occupation arrangements.
exif: {}