The Tulkarm Governorate () is an administrative district and one of the 16

Governorates of Palestine Palestine is a unitary state, but is divided into sixteen governorates for administrative purposes. After the signing of the Oslo Accords, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were placed under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority, wh ...

, located in the north-western

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 ...

. The governorate's land area is 268 square kilometres. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the governorate had a population of 172,800 inhabitants. The ''muhafaza'' or district capital is the city of Tulkarm.

History

During the Ottoman period, the region later forming the Tulkarm Governorate belonged to Jabal Nablus. Like other regions of Nablus' peripheral hinterland, it followed the provincial center, led by a closely knit web of economic, social and political relations between Nablus’ urban notables and the city’s surroundings. With the help of rural trading partners, these urban notables established trading monopolies that transformed Jabal Nablus’ autarkic economy into an export-driven market, shipping vast quantities of

cash crop A cash crop, also called profit crop, is an Agriculture, agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate a marketed crop from a staple crop ("subsi ...

s and

finished goods Finished goods are goods that have completed the manufacturing process but have not yet been sold or distributed to the end user. Manufacturing Manufacturing has three classes of inventory: # Raw material # Work in process # Finished goods A ...

to off-shore markets. Increasing demand for these

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. Th ...

in the Ottoman Empire’s urban centers and in Europe spurred demographic growth and settlement expansion in the lowlands surrounding Jabal Nablus. In the 1860s, as part of the Ottoman Tanzimat, the area of Wadi al-Sha‘ir (Nahal Shechem) was incorporated into the Bani Ṣa‘b nahiya. Then, in the 1870s and 1880s, Bani Ṣa‘b was elevated into the level of a subdistrict with its qa’imaqam and municipal council administrated from Tulkarm.

Localities

The Tulkarm Governorate has 51 localities and two refugee camps ( Tulkarm Camp and Nur Shams Camp). The towns and cities mentioned below have populations of over 1,000.

Municipalities

* Anabta * Attil * Bal'a * Baqa ash-Sharqiyya * Beit Lid *

Deir al-Ghusun Deir al-Ghusun () is a Palestinian people, Palestinian town in the Tulkarm Governorate, located eight kilometers northeast of the city of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, Palestine. The town is near the Green Line (Israel), Green Line (border be ...

* Qaffin * Tulkarm

Villages

References

Governorates of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank {{Palestine-geo-stub

History

Localities

Municipalities

Villages

See also

References