Ar'ara

Ar'ara (, ; lit. "Juniper tree")Palmer, 1881, p.144 is an Arab town in the Wadi Ara region in northern Israel. It is located southwest of Umm al-Fahm just northwest of the Green Line, and is part of the Triangle. In , the population was .

History Pottery sherds from Persian period have been found here.Zertal, 2016, p. 134 Burial complexes from the Roman period have been excavated at Ar'ara, revealing clay lamps, glass vessels and beads, commonly used in the 1st to 4th century CE.Massarwa, 2007, Ar‘ara Final Report Rock-cut tombs with niches, and Byzantine period ceramics have been found.Dauphin, 1998, p. 747

Middle Ages In the Crusader period, the place was known as "Castellum Arearum". In the land allocation made by sultan Baybars in 663 H. (1265-1266 C.E.), Ar'ara was shared between his amirs Ala' al-Din and Sayf al-Din Bayhaq al-Baghdadi.Ibn al-Furat, edition Lyons and Lyons, I, p. 102; II, p. 81. Cited in Petersen, 2001, p. 94

A few clay fragments from the Mamluk period have been found at the same location as the Roman remains.

Ottoman Empire Ar'ara, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Musmus belonged to the Turabay Emirate (1517–1683), which encompassed also the Jezreel Valley, Haifa, Jenin, Beit She'an Valley, northern Jabal Nablus, Bilad al-Ruha/Ramot Menashe, and the northern part of the Sharon plain.

In 1596, Ar'ara appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Sa'ra of the Liwa of Lajjun. It had a population of 8 Muslim households and paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, and goats or beehives; a total of 9,000 akçe.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 159

By the eighteenth century, the village remained in the administrative district of Lajjun, but the revenue of the place was farmed for the Mutasarrıf of Jaffa.Cohen, 1973, p. 175, Cited in Petersen, 2002, p. 94 In 1838, it was noted as a village in the Jenin district.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, 2nd Appendix, p. 131

In the late nineteenth century, the site was described as: A village of moderate size on high ground, with a spring to the east, a second to the west and a well to the south. There are rock cut tombs near. The population is stated by Consul Rogers (1859) as 400, the cultivation then being 30 feddans.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP I, p. 41. Also cited in Petersen, 2001, p. 94

A population list from about 1887 showed that Ar'arah had about 600 inhabitants; all Muslims.Schumacher, 1888, p. 179

British Mandate In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Ar'ara had a population 735, all Muslims.Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Haifa, p. 34 This had increased in the 1931 census to 971, still all Muslims, in 150 houses.Mills, 1932, p. 87

In the 1945 statistics, Ar'ara and Arah had a population of 2,290 Muslims,Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 13 1,490 in Ar'ara and 800 in 'Ara,Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 15 note a and a privately owned land area of 29,537 dunums, in addition to 5,802 dunams of publicly owned land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 47 Of this, 1,724 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 20,560 for cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 89 while 33 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 139

Israel Ar'ara was transferred from Jordanian to Israeli jurisdiction in 1949 under the Rhodes armistice agreements.Family Affair: The Masarwah-Marzuks, Reli Avrahami for Haaretz, 9 July 2009

By 1962 the area had been reduced to 7,269 dunums, partly due to expropriations of 8,236 dunums by the Israeli government in 1953–54. One case of expropriation from a private landowner named Younis became a test case before the High Court of Israel in 1953, as the land had been expropriated by the government without notifying the owner. In 1954 the court ruled that the law did not require the owner to be notified and did not provide a right for the owner to contest the expropriation in advance. This ruling and one other effectively ended the possibility of land owners using the courts to contest the seizure of their land. The neighboring village of ʿAra was merged with Ar'ara in 1985.

Maqam Shaykh Khalaf Maqam Shaykh Khalaf is the only building which was noted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Mandate area, and it is located on a slope by the highest point in the village, set in the middle of extensive graveyards. The Maqam is a single rectangular chamber, covered by a dome. The two top courses are chamfered towards the dome. On the north side is a doorway, and double window set inside shallow arches. There is also a set of windows on the west side. Inside, there are three cenotaphs, located east-west, close to the west wall. A mihrab is located on the south wall. The date of the building is not known, but according to A. Petersen (who inspected the place in 1994), the architecture indicate an eighteenth or early nineteenth century date.Petersen, 2001, p. 94

Demographics

Voting Patterns In the 2022 election, 96 percent of voters in Ar'ara voted for the Arab parties, while 2 percent voted for the parties of the center-left coalition led by Yair Lapid and 1 percent voted for the parties of the right-wing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Among the voters for the Arab parties, 47 percent voted for Balad, while 27 percent voted for the Hadash–Ta'al list and 26 percent voted for Ra'am.

Ar'ara

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