Barkan () is an

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

in the northern

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, about 8 km west of the

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

city of Salfit, under the administrative local government of the

Shomron Regional Council The Shomron Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Shomron'', English ''Samaria Regional Council'') is an Israeli regional council in the northern portion of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Thirty-five Israeli settlements fall under its jurisdict ...

. In its population was . The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

History

Founded in June 1981 by secular Israelis from the

Beitar The Betar Movement (), also spelled Beitar (), is a Revisionist Zionism, Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky. It was one of several right-wing youth movements tha ...

and

Herut Herut () was the major conservative nationalist political party in Israel from 1948 until its formal merger into Likud in 1988. It was an adherent of Revisionist Zionism. Some of their policies were compared to those of the Nazi party. Early y ...

movements, Barkan is part of a chain of settlements built along the Trans-Samaria Highway, and adjacent to the Barkan Industrial Park. The park, established in 1982, has 120 businesses and factories manufacturing plastics, metal-work, food, textile, and more. Of the 5,000 workers, 90% are Palestinian Arabs. According to ARIJ, Israel confiscated land from two

villages in order to construct Barkan: 167 dunams from Qarawat Bani Hassan,Qarawat Bani Hassan Town Profile
ARIJ, p. 17 and 353 dunams from

Sarta Sarta () is a Palestinian town in the Salfit Governorate in the northern West Bank, 22 kilometers southwest of Nablus. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it had a population of approximately 3,382 in 2017. Location Sart ...

. "Barkan" is called after the Hebrew name of the Syrian thistle. The original name of the town was Beit Abba after Abba Ahimeir, a leader of the Lehi.

Archaeology

archeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

east of the town contains remnants of an

Israelite Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

settlement during the time of the first and second

temples A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

References

External links

Menachem Brody's photos of Barkan
{{Shomron Regional Council Non-religious Israeli settlements Populated places established in 1981 1981 establishments in the Israeli Military Governorate Israeli settlements in the West Bank

History

Archaeology

See also

References

External links