al-Bireh

Al-Bireh stands 1.55 kilometres east of Ramallah at 846 metres above the sea, where the road up from Jerusalem finally levels out. The two cities have long since grown into one built fabric while remaining separate municipalities, and together they give the governorate its name. The Palestinian census of 2007 counted 35,910 people in al-Bireh, in 7,917 households.

The name is Canaanite and means the wells, for the springs on its land. The site is far older than the city’s administrative existence: Britannica records archaeological remains going back to the Bronze Age and the ruins of a Crusader church, while al-Bireh Municipality, quoted by ARIJ, dates the city’s establishment to 1928. Its landmarks include the Grand Mosque, al-Omari and al-Khulafa’ mosques, the shrines of Shiban, Najem and Abu Mujahid, the Church of the Holy Family, the khan, and the hill of at-Tall.

Its relationship to Ramallah has always been asymmetric in a way worth stating plainly, because the archive’s Ramallah record tells the other half: before 1948 Ramallah was predominantly Christian and about twice al-Bireh’s size, and al-Bireh was the Muslim town. The demography of both changed drastically between 1948 and 1967 as refugees arrived, and again after 1994 when the Authority made the twin city the seat of Palestinian government.

The occupation on its land

Under Oslo II al-Bireh was divided: 8,157 dunums, 39.8 per cent of the city, classified Area A where the Palestinian Authority holds responsibility for internal security, and where most of the population lives; 1,033 dunums Area B; the remainder Area C.

Israel confiscated 1,126 dunums of the city — 5.5 per cent — for two settlements. Pisgot, founded in 1981, stands entirely on al-Bireh land to the south; Beit El, founded in 1977, partly on its northern land. ARIJ recorded a combined settler population of 7,122 in 2009. A further 1,422 dunums, 7 per cent of the city, were taken for the Beit El military base to the north — which houses the central office of the Israeli Civil Administration for the West Bank, along with a detention centre. The body that issues or refuses Palestinian building permits across Area C administers them from land taken from al-Bireh.

Since 2000 the city has been ringed with obstacles: a permanent checkpoint at the eastern entrance to Ramallah and al-Bireh near Beit El, on the road linking the city to Route 60, and around the military base four roadblocks, three iron gates and four earth mounds. The eastern approach being closed, traffic is pushed south to the Qalandiya crossing, which is how a checkpoint about five kilometres away becomes al-Bireh’s front door.

Sources

• Al Bireh City Profile — Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem (ARIJ)
• Al-Birah — Encyclopaedia Britannica