Salhab
Salhab is a small Palestinian village in the Tubas Governorate in the northeastern West Bank, located four kilometers north of Tubas. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics census, it had a population of 45 living in five households in 2007 and a population of 25 in 2017. As of 2007, its mayor was Fawze Sawafta.
History
Salhab has been identified with the biblical town of Bezeq where Saul gathered his army to relieve Jabesh-Gilead, mentioned in the Book of Samuel. Archaeological evidence throughout the village and its vicinity, in the form of walls and foundations of ancient buildings, suggest a previous Roman or Byzantine-era presence in Salhab.Ceramic objects from the Byzantine era have been found here.
Ottoman era
In 1596, it appeared in Ottoman tax registers as "Salhab", a village in the nahiya of Jabal Sami in the liwa of Nablus. It had a population of eight households and two bachelors, all Muslim. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives; a total of 4,000 Akçe.In his 1870 visit, French explorer Victor Guérin described Salhab as "A little town, now destroyed, on a hill whose rocky sides are pierced by numerous cisterns. The place which it occupied is now covered with confused materials, the remains of demolished dwellings, and disposed for the most part in circular heaps round silos or subterranean magazines cut in the rock." According to the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, the modern settlement was re-established on the ancient khirba in 1880 by a family from Nablus. After the death of the family's head, Salhab's lands were sold to immigrants coming from present-day Lebanon and Iraq. Nonetheless, no population for the village was recorded in the 1931 British census of Palestine.
Modern era
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Salhab has been under Israeli occupation.The Palestinian National Authority established a three-member local development committee to administer the village's affairs in 1999. The principal services provided by the committee are the distribution of water and humanitarian aid. Today, Salhab's residents are entirely dependent on agriculture as a source of income. The village lacks educational institutions, health centers, retail shops and food markets and residents have to travel to 'Aqqaba and Tubas for access to such services.
Geography
Salhab is situated in the southwestern Zababdeh Valley on a small tell with an average altitude of 430 meters above sea level. The village's steep northern slopes are full of scattered ancient building material dating to the Roman era. In 1987 the built-up area of Salhab consists of 15 dunams and is concentrated in the western section of the tell which also contains a number of small quarries. There are 30 cisterns in the village, but the nearest source of water is the Wadi al-Far'a spring, 10 kilometers to the southwest.Positioned off the road between Tubas and Ibziq, nearby localities include Tayasir to the east, Tubas 4 kilometers to the south, 'Aqqaba 2 kilometers to the west and Raba to the north. The total land area is roughly 5,000 dunams, 1,880 of which is cultivated with much of the remaining designated for agriculture, grazing and forests.