Translator’s Preface

In June of 1993, my father’s first cousin Dr. Ṣalāḥ Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb and his wife visited my family
and me in Tallahassee, Florida. I was then an assistant professor of philosophy, having been hired two
years ago by Florida State University after my graduation in 1991 from the University of Wisconsin at
Madison. At the time, my mother was living with us, and my sister Nagham and her husband, Yasir, and
their four beautiful children were also living in Tallahassee, having arrived from Amman, Jordan, in 1992.
Dr. Ṣalāḥ had a married daughter who lived in Gainesville, Florida, the home of the University of Florida,
and had come to visit her. Before he came to the US, he learned from our relatives in Amman that my
mother, my sister, and I all live in Tallahassee. So he decided to come to Tallahassee to visit the wife and
children of his late cousin, my father, Maḥmūd Yaʿqūb. While he was there, Dr. Ṣalāḥ told me about a
foundation he established for developmental projects in Budrus, the Palestinian village to which the
Yaʿqūb family belongs. He said that the foundation was based on a study that he completed about Budrus
and its developmental needs. I asked him whether the study was published in a monograph. He said that it
was, and that he brought a copy with him to give me as a gift. I asked him to autograph it for me. The
autograph reads: “A present to brother ʿAlāʾ Yaʿqūb, with my appreciation and love, [signed] Ṣalāḥ
Yaʿqūb, 5/6/1993.” The monograph is a study commissioned by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Regional Office for Education in the Arab Countries. It
is meant to be a scientific study. It has all the methodology and statistical analysis one expects in a
quantitative scientific study. But it is more than that. It gives a picture of the history of the village and of
the social demographics of its people who live inside it and in the diaspora. It contains a historical and
human narrative of Budrus. For years, I have entertained the idea of translating this document into
English and making it available to all those whose heritage can be traced, at least in part, to Budrus, and
who might find reading the Arabic original difficult or even impossible. Recently I have had the time to
carry out this project. I translated everything about the document except, of course, the English summary
that is appended to it and the two Appendices, which contain the two survey forms used to collect the
data. Needless to say, most of the information in this document is outdated—but not the history, folklore,
and traditional accounts. Even the outdated information is important. It paints a human and social picture
of how the village was in 1992. At least, you will relate to a historical stage of it, and hence you will be
connected to the human and physical constitution of Budrus as it was in 1992.
I hope that this narrative will encourage you to visit Budrus in the future and connect to another
temporal stage of it—a more recent one. In spite of the fact that this is a study commissioned by
UNESCO, a careful reader cannot overlook the unmistakably nationalist language of the study. For
instance, Dr. Ṣalāḥ refers to the land assigned to Israel by the United Nations after 1948 as the “part of
Palestine that Israel occupied in 1948” and he refers to the Mediterranean shore of present-day Israel as
the “Western shore of Palestine.”
I would like to express my gratitude to Sumaya Ibrahim, the daughter of my sister Nagham
Yaʿqūb, for copyediting this translation and for making it available on the Internet. Of course, my deepest
gratitude is to the late Dr. Ṣalāḥ Yaʿqūb, who conducted and published this study. This study is part of the
rich legacy he left behind. All of those who will read the Arabic or the English version of this study are
indebted to his diligent and devoted work. I dedicate the translation to his memory. I am sure he would be
pleased that the generations of Budrus in the West will be able to read what he wrote 20 years ago.

Aladdin Mahmud Yaqub

Pennsylvania, USA
November 2012
 Budrus Update (10/2017)
Translator’s Comments

In my preface to (the late) Dr. Ṣalāḥ Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb’s 1992 study of the Village of
Budrus, I alluded to the fact that the non-historical information about Budrus contained in the
study was most likely outdated. Part of that is my own failure. The translation was completed in
2012; yet, I failed to mention the internationally observed nonviolent resistance staged in 2003
by the people of Budrus and spearheaded by its women, which aimed at preventing the Israeli
authorities from erecting part of the infamous wall (the so called “Security Barrier”) on the land
of Budrus. Budrus, as a consequence of the 1948 war, lost two-thirds of its land as part of the
“Green Zone,” which separated the land occupied by Israel from the Palestinian territories (that
is, Gaza and the West Bank). The part of the wall that planned by Israel in 2003 would have
resulted in further significant loss of Budrus’s land and olive trees. The Israeli press estimated
that the wall would have cost Budrus the loss of 300 acres and 3,000 olive trees – a major blow
to the economy of Budrus. That nonviolent and prolonged campaign succeeded magnificently; as
a consequence, the Israeli authorities withdrew their original plan and left Budrus almost free
from any wall (the resistance preserved 95% of the land integrity of Budrus).

The campaign attracted international attention. It was covered by almost all of the major
media, such as the New York Times and the BBC. Furthermore, a film documenting the
nonviolent campaign of the people of Budrus was produced and screened in 2009. The film was
directed by Julia Bacha and is titled Budrus. The film is an outcome of a combined
Israeli/Palestinian/American effort. I advise the reader to search the web for “Budrus Nonviolent
Resistance.” You’ll obtain a significant amount of information about the nonviolent campaign of
the people of Budrus. You can also purchase for a very reasonable price a DVD copy of the
documentary film. Let me add one further update. Al Jazeera reported in February 2017 that the
women of Budrus, for the second time, led a nonviolent campaigned that aimed at protecting
certain homes in the village from being demolished by the Israeli army. And this campaign,
according to the article, was successful too.

So, that was my failure. I wish I had the ability to travel to Budrus and bring back an
updated description of its current state. But I can’t. However, I spoke at length with my
brother-in-law Fatḥī, who had just returned to his home in Amman, Jordan, from a visit to
Budrus, his hometown. It was a sad occasion. Fatḥī’s sister Ṣafiyyah had passed away in Amman
(and was buried in Budrus) a few days before our phone conversation. Fatḥī is my father’s first
cousin and the husband of my older sister Nisrīn. Fatḥī is a grandson of the original Yaʿqūb, who
founded the Yaʿqūb family. Fatḥī’s father is Shaykh Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb, who is one of Yaʿqūb’s three
sons. I mention all of this to indicate that Fatḥī is quite knowledgeable about Budrus and the
Yaʿqūb family. During our phone conversation, I mentioned to him the Budrus study that I
translated in 2012, and was posted on the Internet by my niece Sumaya Ibrahim. He wasn’t
aware of the translation, but he was familiar with the Arabic original of the study, as his brother
Dr. Ṣalāḥ Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb had given him a copy of the study. I asked him about his recent trip to
Budrus and its current state. In particular, I asked if agriculture remains the central occupation of

 

the villagers. He embarked on a lengthy and informative description of Budrus and its people. I
will report here what I learned from him.

Farming is an activity of the past. The vast majority of the current Budrusites earn wages
that far exceed what they can get from farming (or at least, from farming alone). There are three
types of professional activity now. A majority of Budrusites work in Israel as craftsmen and/or
construction workers, or are employed in various Israeli industries. Palestinian workers, of any
type, are preferred by Israeli industries because they work for much lower wages than what
Israeli citizens typically demand. Another large portion of Budrusites have degrees from
community colleges, 4-year colleges, or universities. This educated cadre is mostly employed by
the Palestinian authorities: they are teachers, accountants, bookkeepers, social workers,
surveyors, nurses, medics, dental hygienists, lab technologists, computer scientists, journalists,
engineers, and all sorts of professionals who require college training. A small number of
Budrusites are sent by their colleges and universities to the United States to seek doctorates.
When they return home, they typically work as college and university professors, most likely at
the same institutions that funded their education.

Fatḥī also told me that Budrus looks 100% different from the time in which I visited it
(1965). The old style of houses is gone. Now people build modern villas with nice gardens.
According to the study, electricity came to Budrus in the past. But now, according to Fatḥī, not
only is electricity present, but also TV satellite dishes, Internet, Wi-Fi networks, and cellular
phones are. He also said that since Budrus is only about 45 Kilometers from Ramallah, not only
do many Budrusites work in and commute to Ramallah, but since many suburbs are now
associated with Ramallah, Budrus can be thought of as a far suburb of Ramallah.

I had three additional important questions for Fatḥī. First, I wanted to know about the
rural culture of the Budrus I knew; second, I wanted to know what the Budrusites do when the
olive harvest season arrives, since they are no longer interested in farming; and third, I wanted to
know whether there remain Yaʿqūbs in Budrus. Unfortunately, I got to ask the first and third
questions but not the second. I did a little superficial research regarding the second question, and
I supplemented my research with conjecture.

Regarding the first question, Fatḥī surprisingly said that the culture has never changed. In
his words: “the mentality of farmers is still the dominant way of thinking in Budrus, no matter
how educated those people get.” He mentioned several examples, which agreed with my youth
observations when I stayed in Budrus for 5 days (in 1965). That was illuminating: something
important remains familiar about Budrus.

As for the third question, he said that all the Yaʿqūbs had either left Budrus or passed
away. He added that currently there is one Yaʿqūb left in Budrus—namely, his older brother
Muḥammad. He still lives in the family home, but he improved on the old house greatly. I asked
him if the legacy of the Yaʿqūb family is still alive in Budrus. He believes that it is, and if
someone went to Budrus and identified herself or himself as a grandchild of Maḥmūd Yaʿqūb
(my father), she or he might be received with generosity and admiration. However, he added, the
tradition of telling stories and keeping an oral history of the village is dying out quickly; only a
 

very small portion of the younger generations is interested in the history of their village. The
generations of the Yaʿqūb family that built this remarkable legacy are either dying out or have
died out. The first generation is Yaqʿqūb and his sons, Shaykh Abdullah, Shakh Muṣliḥ, and
Abdurabbah (my grandfather); the second generation consists of the grandchildren of Yaʿqūb.
Those includes my father (a son of Abdurabbah), Dr. Ṣalāḥ (a son of Shaykh Muṣliḥ), and
Yaʿqūb (a son of Shaykh Abdullah). Everyone mentioned has passed away; and the rest of this
second generation is elderly or has passed away. All the other generations of Yaʿqūb have left
Budrus. When Fatḥī went to visit Budrus recently, he went to the local mosque for the Friday
prayer. No one said salaam to him. No one knew who he was. This led me to predict that within a
couple of generations this oral-history tradition will cease completely and with it the legacy of
the Yaʿqūb family will dissipate. This is a sad commentary on progress and its consequences.

Regarding the second question, which I didn’t get to ask, I believe that people who own
olive trees cannot let its fruit go to waste. I conjectured that when the harvest season arrives, the
people of Budrus who own olive trees hire laborers from nearby villages to collect the olives;
then the olives are either packed or pressed for oil and sold. This is my conjecture and I hope it is
true.

Aladdin Mahmud Yaqub

Pennsylvania, USA
October 2017

 

 The Village of Budrus

A Study of Its Sociological, Cultural,

Educational, and Agricultural Conditions
and Potentials for Development and Growth

by

[The Late] Dr. Ṣalāḥ Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb

Regional Advisor in Education for Rural Development
UNESCO Regional Office for Education in the Arab Countries

November 1992

 

 Dedication:
To the Generations of Budrus,
So They May Never Forget

 

 First: Introduction

This study of the village of Budrus is considered one among the very few known studies
that were carried out of Palestinian villages in order to understand their sociological, cultural,
and agricultural conditions and the areas and potentials for rural development and growth. This
1
study has helped in selecting the village of Budrus to be one of the five residential communities
that are included in the support for the occupied Palestinian territories within the framework of
Project 431/JOR/01, funded from outside the UNESCO budget. The project aims, among other
things, at supporting private associations and organizations in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
and the occupied Palestinian territories to improve the services that these associations offer to the
population, especially in the areas of early childhood education and adult education and literacy.
The UNESCO Regional Office for Education in the Arab Countries began executing this project
in 1991, and it is expected to be completed at the end of 1992.
The village of Budrus was until June of 1967 an integral part of the Arab land that is
located on the West Bank of the Jordan River. It became after that date, as an outcome of the
Second Arab-Israeli War, part of the Arab territories occupied by Israel. Due to the similarity in
the conditions, resources, and state that are peculiar to the occupied Palestinian villages after the
war of June 1967, it is hoped that this study will give a realistic picture, although in part, of the
nature of the changes that are taking place in those villages and of the challenges that they face.
Perhaps this will help the international and national institutions and organizations that are
concerned with offering support and funds meet the real needs of the populations of these regions
and solve the pressing problems of which they suffer. Perhaps, they could remain steadfast in
their land.
This study aims at accomplishing the following:
1 To give a brief historical account of Budrus;
2 To draw attention to some of the village’s aspects that pertain to its distinguished sights,
folklore, and ruins;
3 To give a brief idea of the progress of the housing development taking place in the
village;
4 To give a clear idea of the residential and social demographics of the village’s inhabitants
and its people in the diaspora;
5 To learn about the nature of the economic activities of the people living in Budrus and in
the diaspora;
6 To give a clear picture of the origin of education in the village and the challenges it faces,
including early childhood education;
7 To learn about the nature of housing and homes inside and outside the village;

1
These communities consists of, in addition to the village of Budrus, the village of Yaṭā
(al-Khalīl District), Qalandiyya Camp, Dayr ʿAmmār Camp, and the village of al-Yāmūn (Janīn
District).
 

8 To give an idea of the extent of the use of visual and audio communication devices
among the villagers;
9 To learn about the youth and health services and related facilities that are available in the
village, and the challenges that the villagers face in the area of services;
10 To give an idea about the state of agriculture in the village, its challenges, and the
opportunities for agricultural development; and finally
11 To learn about the nature of the developmental projects that were accomplished by the
villagers and the ones they would like to accomplish, and the nature of the current
problems they face.
This study will address analytically these topics in the following sections according to the order
above.
In collecting the data, the study relied on two primary methods: the method of
distributing surveys, designed for the purpose of collecting specific information, to the heads of
households who live in the village or in the diaspora; and the method of personal interviews with
some school principals, community leaders, and administrators in the village, especially when
collecting information about the folklore, historical ruins, the origin of education in the village
and the improvements needed in this area, the story of introducing visual and audio
communication devices, the available social and health services, the state of agriculture and the
general needs of the population in this regard, and the nature of the developmental projects the
village needs.
The study employed two different survey forms:
The first (Appendix 1) was especially designed to collect data from the families that still
live in the village—there are 160 such families. These families were requested to answer all the
questions listed in the survey (that is, Questions no. 1 through no. 40). As for the families that
were forced, due to the Israeli occupation, to leave the village and live in the diaspora—there are
303 such families—they were requested to answer Questions no. 1 through no. 21 of the same
survey.
The second (Appendix 2) was especially designed to facilitate the personal interviews
when information was gathered from school principals, community leaders, and administrators in
the village.
It should be mentioned that the study was careful to collect data from all the heads of
households that currently live in the village or in the diaspora. The number of these households is
463.
The author would like to thank all those who cooperated with him in order to bring to
fruition this modest effort—chief among them is the heads of households of the people of
Budrus, whether they live in it or in the diaspora, who displayed the utmost of understanding and
enthusiasm for completing the surveys with care and objectivity. The author also thanks Mr.
Maḥmūd Ḥasan Maḥmūd (Abū Māzin) for his sincere effort in overseeing the completion of
these surveys by the families that still live in the village and in collecting information about the
village from its community leaders. He also would like to thank Walīd Yaʿqūb, Hadīl Wajīh
Yaʿqūb, ʿAbdulḥāfīẓ Maḥfūẓ ʿAbdulḥāfīẓ, Māzin Maḥmūd Ḥasan, Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿUthmān,
Rāʾidah al-Huraynī, Ṣufiyā Fazaʿ, and Fuʾād ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb for the contribution and help they
offered in order to complete this study, whether these were in gathering the data from the heads

 

of households who live in Amman and other Jordanian cities, or in uploading the data to or
storing them in the computer, or in formatting the data in tables or other formats that are suitable
for analysis, or in printing the initial draft and editing it linguistically. Furthermore, the author
thanks Mr. Naʿīm Abū Wardah for his translation of the summary of the study into English, and
all the executives and employees of the International Corporation for Office and Drafting
Services and Supplies in Amman for their full cooperation in printing this book and producing it
in its final form.

 

 Second: A Historical Overview of the Village

Budrus is located to the east of the city of al-Lyddd, which is only about 9 kilometers
from the village, and to the west of the city of Ramallah, which is only about 45 kilometers [from
the village], and to the northwest of the city of Jerusalem, which is separated from the village by
50 kilometers (see the section of the map of Palestine in Figure 1). Before the first Israeli
occupation of 1948, it was part of al-Ramla District, Jaffa Province, and then it became part of
Ramallah Province.
The homes of the village now occupy an area estimated to be about 2 square kilometers.
2
They were built originally on the site of the Roman village of Patros . The land that was
cultivated for agriculture and that was not cultivated extended collectively prior to 1948 to about
25,000 dunams [about 6177 acres]. After that year, the collective land shrank to about 8,000
dunams [about 1976 acres], as the village lost more than two-thirds of its land as an outcome of
the First Arab-Israeli war, since these lands became part of the “Green Zone,” which separated
the Palestinian part occupied in 1948 from the part that remained Palestinian after that year.
Currently the land of Budrus is surrounded by the lands of the villages of Qibyā, Bayt Nabālā,
al-Ḥadītha, Naʿlīn, and al-Madyah.
The following sites and historical ruins are part of the land of Budrus and of the lands
3
adjacent to it—perhaps, they were part of the village in the past:

Figure 1: A Section of a Map of Palestine (al-Ramla District)

It shows the location of the village of Budrus and the neighboring towns

1 Budrus Ruins [khirbat Budrus]

It is located to the west of the village, about 0.5 kilometer from its homes. It is a place
filled with water-collecting wells, reservoirs that are carved in stones, caves, rocks that are
engraved in minute detail and symmetric shapes, polished columns, the remains of many pottery
4
pots, and uncolored fasyafasāʾ stones that are scattered all over the place. All of these are
indications that this place, khirbat Budrus [‘Budrus Ruins’] as called by the locals, must have
been inhabited by people at some time.

2 Zibdah Ruins [khirbat Zibdah]

It is located to the south of the village. It comprises partially destroyed buildings and
walls, reservoirs carved in stones, other constructions indicating that an oil press must have
existed, and columns of an ancient monastery.

2
The source is Bilādinā Filistīn, 4th Volume, Second Part, “The Jaffa Communities,” by Muṣṭafā
Murād al-Dabbāgh, p. 567, First Edition, AH 1392/1972 CE.
3
Ibid, pp. 556–5567
4
A type of semi-precious stone. (Translator’s note)
 

3 Kūfah House [bayt Kūfah]
It is located to the west, about 2 kilometers from the village’s homes, and it runs parallel
to the modern village’s land. It contains some foundations of old homes and some caves.

4 Ḥarmūsh Ruins [khirbat Ḥarmūsh]

It is known among the villagers as khirbat al-Ramūsh [‘al-Ramūsh Ruins’]. It is located
at the southwest of Budrus, between Budrus and the village of Jammūz. It is elevated about 206
meters above sea level. It comprises foundations, graveyards, reservoirs, floors, and oil presses
that are carved in stones. It is possible that this is the same as the village of “Zaylūsh,” which
Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, the author of Muʿjam al-Buldān, mentioned [in his book]. Also “Zaylūsh”
might be a corruption of the name “Ḥarmūsh,” to which the following were attributed:
(a) Abū al-Qāsim Hibat Allāh ibn Niʿmah ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Sirī al-Kinānī al-Zaylūshī;
and
(b) Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Abū Isḥāq al-Qaysī, the learned jurist, whose
ancestry is attributed to Zaylūsh. He was a soldier who left the military and studied the Qurʾān
and jurisprudence and acquired the Ḥadīth from some of his teachers, then travelled to Baalbek
and resided in it, and then moved to Hama, and finally settled in Damascus and died there in AH
552/1157 CE.

5 Al-Birriyyah Ruins [khirbat al-Birriyyah]

It is located to the south of Ḥarmūsh Ruins, and it contains some ruins of old homes,
mounts of debris, and reservoirs carved in stones.

 

 Third: Distinguished Landmarks, Folklore, and Historical Sites

In addition to what was mentioned previously about the historical ruins that surround the
village of Budrus, there are other famous historical sites that distinguish the village, the most
important of which are:

1 The Church [al-kanīsah]

Near the village, at the eastern side of it, there is an elevated place, which the villagers
refer to by the name al-kanīsah [‘The Church’]. If you enter this place and examine it carefully,
you would indeed find that these remains indicate that this place was a large church building.
There are large stones engraved in a symmetric fashion, and many are still holding together in a
precise structure; there are also the remains of large columns; and small fasyafasāʾ are still
scattered here and there.

2 The Roman Cemetery [al-qubūr al-rūmāniyyah]

When you stand at the ruins of the church we mentioned above and look to the east, you
would see within a few meters symmetrical geometrical figures that are engraved in stones. Each
one of them measures two meters in length, one meter in width, and one and a half meters in
depth. These in fact are Roman graves. Their presence near the ruined structure clearly proves
that this structure was indeed a church in which its congregation worshiped and near which they
buried their dead. The people of Budrus refer to these Roman graves by the name al-nawāmīs.
They are still apparent to this day.

3 Al-bayādir and al-sidrah

Al-bayādir, which are colloquially called al-nawādir, are part of the village’s folklore.
They form a piece of land that measures about 10 dunams [about 2.27 acres] and is adjacent to
the village from the eastern side. The land used to be divided among the farmers of the village
such that each farmer was assigned 100 square meters, which is called baydar [singular of
bayādir], so he may gather and thresh his harvest of wheat or rye in this place that is designated
for him. The threshing of grains used to be performed by primitive methods, as several animals
are tied together and made to tread on the harvest for several days until it becomes soft, allowing
5
the farmer to separate the grains from the chaff by the use of al-midhrāh and wind.

5
A tool (like a cane) that is made of a wooden cylinder, which measures about 1.5 meters in
length, and about 3 centimeters in diameter. One of its ends is attached to several long wooden
prongs that are relatively broad and close to each other. They number about 5–7 prongs,
collectively forming al-midhrāh, which in most cases resembles a human hand. The farmer, after
the animals trod on the harvest, separates the hay by means of this tool. He stands with his back
to the wind and holds the cylindrical rod at its last third, directing its wooden prongs towards the
softened harvest. When the prongs engage the harvest, the farmer raises the tool, and with it the
grains and hay that are carried with it, and positions it in the direction of the wind, which
separates the grains from the chaff.
 

 The villagers eschewed the use of al-bayādir after many homes were built on the land
that was designated for al-bayādir, and after the use of modern threshing machinery replaced the
use of primitive methods.
As for al-sidrah tree, as the villagers used to call it, it was an ancient huge tree whose
trunk measured more than 4 meters in circumference. It was planted to the west of al-bayādir
and close to them. Farmers used to sit and sleep under it during the season of threshing the
harvest, as its branches covered an area estimated at 80 square meters.
Al-sidrah was considered one of the distinguished sights of the village and part of its
tradition. It was used as a place for community gathering during the summer, when the village’s
elders would gather at the tree and sit in its shades seeking comfort and entertainment, playing
the popular game of al-sījah on its dirt. The elders would circulate around it, being divided into
two teams, with each group cheering for its team against the other team; in this manner they
would spend an enjoyable time. Al-sidrah was not a monopoly for the village’s elders only, but
the children too had a share in it. As soon as the elders left for their jobs, children would come
running with their ropes and make swings hanging from the tree’s huge branches. Those swings
were considered among the most important entertainment available for the children then.
When the village’s elders decided in 1966 to construct a new mosque for the village at the
place of al-sidrah, they disagreed among themselves, as one group supported the uprooting of
the tree and building the mosque in its place, and another group objected to this opinion and
considered al-sidrah necessary for the village. The disagreement between the two groups was
severe enough to halt the construction of the new mosque. It became necessary for the Islamic
Judge of Ramallah to adjudicate the matter; he came to the village, met with the villagers and the
village’s administrators, observed the proposed location of the mosque and al-sidrah, and
decreed that it is best to uproot the tree and convinced the objecting party of his point of view.
Thus al-sidrah was uprooted, and the village lost one of its famous distinguished sights. The new
mosque was built in its place.

4 Al-bad
It is an ancient Roman structure that is underground, with only one opening in its roof
allowing light to shine through. This structure is located approximately in the center of the
village. It is still standing until today, and a person may climb down into it through a small
entrance located at the side of the main road.
The senior citizens of the village say that the structure was used as an oil press and was
known in the past as al-bad. It is still known by this name. The area that surrounds it in the
middle of the village is known as al-bad neighborhood. Al-bad continued to be used as an oil
press by the villagers throughout the Turkish era, as they used to press their olives by a large
circular boulder; in its middle was a huge wooden column, which several men rotated many
times until the olives became very soft. After that they placed the olives in square boxes made of
goat hair, and the boxes were staked over each other under a wooden press that was forced down
by several men until the production of olive oil was completed. The boulder and the remains of
the press still exist inside al-bad until the present time.

5 Abū Dāwūd’s Oil Press [maʿṣarat Abū Dāwūd li-l-zayt]

 

 This oil press is located at the center of the village, near the old mosque. It was
introduced into the village during the British Mandate over Palestine—precisely, in the year
1925. It is newer than the ancient al-bad. The olives were pressed in it by means of a large
circular boulder harnessed to a horse, which continued to rotate until the olives were threshed,
and then they were transferred to a press made of iron, and not of wood as was the case with
al-bad. However, the process of forcing the press down in order to generate the required pressure
on the threshed olives to produce the oil was still carried out by the manual labor of men. The
villagers stopped using this oil press after 1967 due to the introduction of modern olive oil
presses. Recently the Israeli occupying forces confiscated the large circular boulder, the press,
and other remains of the old oil press, and transposed them to a nearby tourist resort, claiming
that these antiques are part of their folklore.

6 The Village’s Old Mosque [jāmiʿ al-qaryah al-qadīm]

It is located in a place where there are many collapsed ancient Roman homes (Figure 2).
It is still in use by the villagers, and it is called al-jāmiʿ al-ʿumary al-qadīm [‘the Old ʿUmarī
Mosque’]. It is constructed according to Islamic architecture, with a rectangular shape that
measures about 8 meters in length and 6 meters in width. Large stones were used in its
construction, which are the same type of stone the Romans used to build their temples and
homes. In its court there are a water well and two carefully polished columns, each of which is
longer than 2 meters.
As to when it was built and who built it, the most likely opinion is that it was built when
the Muslims conquered the Syrian Territories [bilād al-shām] and after they expelled the Romans
from them. It remained the only mosque in the village since its construction until 1967, when the
villagers undertook the construction of a new mosque. In 1901, the old mosque building was
utilized as the first school in the village, in addition to its serving as a mosque. It continued to be
used as such until 1939, when the construction of the first Gharbiyyah School in the village was
completed.

Figure 2: An Outside View of the Village’s Old Mosque

7 The Guest House or the Court [al-maḍāfah or al-sāḥah]

It is located near the Old ʿUmarī Mosque. It is an old structure that consists of one
rectangular room whose area is about 50 square meters. The structure was used then to house
[passerby] strangers and visitors who did not belong to [any of the families of] the village. This
is the reason for its name. Those visitors would sleep in the Court and the villagers would serve
them food for the length of their stay in the village. The Court was also used as a center in which
the villagers would congregate, especially the heads of households, during religious events such
as the month of Ramaḍān, when every head of household would bring his food and the villagers
would break the fast together. The villagers stopped using the Court for these purposes a long
time ago. The structure is still standing across from the Old Mosque. The villagers transformed it
in the late 1950’s into a bakery, [which operated] for some time and then stopped.

8 Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary [maqām al-imām ʿAlī]

 

 This is a structure that is located to the west of the village (see Figure 3). It consists of a
chamber covered by a dome, built according to Islamic architecture, whose area is about 25
square meters. Next to it is an open gallery, also built according to Islamic architecture, whose
area is equal to the area of the chamber. A thick fence surrounds the structure. There are three
wells in its court to collect rainwater and several graves, some of which are inside the chamber.
The structure was built on a hill that oversees the western shore of Palestine (Figure 4). It is
believed that it was built to be a prayer chamber for the Muslim general and his army during that
time as well as to be used as an observation post.

Figure 3: Two Views of Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary

1. The sanctuary from the outside. The view shows the chamber and the dome (right) and the
open gallery (left) together with the surrounding fence.
2. The open gallery and the dome of Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary.

Figure 4: A Western View from Inside the Open Gallery of Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary
It shows the opposing mountains, which are covered with bushes, and the western shore of
Palestine.

9 A Saint Sanctuary (Abū Ismāʿīl) [maqām walī (Abū Ismāʿīl)]

It is also a structure consisting of a chamber covered by a dome that is built according to
Islamic architecture. However, there is no open gallery next to it, as is the case with Imām ʿAlī
Sanctuary. This structure is located to the north of the village, about one kilometer away from it.
It is built on a high place that oversees vast areas from all its sides. The Sanctuary now falls
within the region that Israel occupied in 1948. It is being used presently for military exercises,
and it is separated from the village by the 1948 borders (Figure 5), so the villagers are not
permitted to reach it.
There are many such sanctuaries in the West Bank, all of which are located at the top of
mountains. This is evidence that all of them were built during the era of the Islamic conquests for
the same purpose for which Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary was built—namely, as a prayer chamber and an
observation post.
As to why this structure is named Abū Ismāʿīl Sanctuary and the other one Imām ʿAlī
Sanctuary, it is most likely that, as it is still common till the present, the Muslims during that
time were of the habit of naming many of the places of worship after saints and righteous people
in reverence for them and to seek the blessings of their names. Accordingly the first sanctuary
was named “Imām ʿAlī Santuary” in reverence for the Imām ʿAlī (may God glorify his face), and
the second “Saint Abū Ismāʿīl Sanctuary” in reverence for one of the saints of God who had this
name at that time. Both sanctuaries are still standing today, but they are in dire need of
maintenance and care.

Figure 5: Two Views of the Region of Saint Abū Ismāʿīl Sanctuary

1. A view of the sanctuary that was taken from afar since it cannot be reached.
2. A view of the border that separates the sanctuary from the land of the village; next to the
border goats graze.

 

10 Al-mazār
It is located in the northeastern corner of the village. It is an ancient structure, whose
main features are still apparent: the large stones and the walls are still standing until the present.
6
Near the structure, there is a small saqīfah that is surrounded by stones, which the villages call
al-mazār. The land that encloses the ancient structure and the saqīfah is known as al-mazār
ground.
The villagers used to award this al-mazār all respect and reverence. They believed that it
could heal the sick by the will of God. If a member of a family became sick, the head of the
household would go to al-mazār and take with him a little olive oil to illuminate the place, and
then he would collect some dirt, straw, or pebbles from inside the place and place them under the
sick person during his sleep, hoping for his recovery.
As to why it is called al-mazār [literally, “the visited place”], it is most likely that this
label is due to the frequent visitations that people made to this place, because one of the
righteous saints was buried there.

11 Al-maqyal
It is a region of land located within the western part of the village, whose area is about 1
dunam [about 0.247 acre]. In the past, there was a shepherd for the village, who herded the
7
calves and cows of the villagers in return for an annual wage of one ṣāʿ of wheat per cow. That
shepherd, or rāʿī al-ʿijāl [‘the calves’ shepherd’] as they used to call him, used this place as a
gathering point for the cows in the morning before he would herd them to graze. During the
8
waiting time, some of the cattle would taqīl in that place to rest until the gathering of cows is
completed. It is because of this that this place was called al-maqyal [literally, “the place for lying
down”]. This is evidence of the importance of raising cows in the village in the past and of the
availability of pastures in it.
Now this al-maquyal is abandoned since the villagers have no use for it due to the
scarcity of pastures after the Israeli occupation. This in turn resulted in the reduction of the
number of cows owned by the residents of the village, who recently built on this place a heath
clinic for them.

12 Al-hawwāyah
It is located at the southeastern side of the village, and a few meters from it. It is a
cleavage between rocks that measure about 2 meters in length, a half meter in width, and no
more than a meter in depth. If you look carefully at its depth, you will find many extended
openings under the rocks in all directions.
It was called al-hawwāyah [literally, “the wind tunnel”] because a reverberating sound,
similar to the whistling of wind, is emitted from this cleavage perpetually. It is louder in the

6
A saqīfah is a small structure that consists of a single room constructed from bricks that are
covered from the inside and the outside by mud mixed with straw to help support the structure.
7
A measurement for grains that is, in ancient times among the people of Hejaz, equivalent to 4
amdād, that is, 1,220 dirhams (al-Muʿjam al-Wasīṭ, p. 528). However, the modern ṣāʿ, which is
used in the village, is equivalent to 2.5 riṭls, that is, about 7.5 kilograms.
8
That is, they would lie on the ground in order to rest.
 

winter than in the summer. A person can clearly hear it if he lies down on the rock and places his
ear close to the opening.

13 The Cave of Forty [maghārat al-arbaʿīn]

It is located at the western side of the village within the general cemetery, and it is only a
few meters from Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary. Its area is about 40 square meters. It extends several
meters underneath a large rock, and contains no openings other than the main entrance. The
reason for calling it “The Cave of Forty” is that there are forty human skulls inside it, which our
ancestors saw in the past, and when they discovered them, they transmitted this name to us, and
we, in our turn, transmit it to the coming generations.

14 The Press [al-ʿaṣṣārah]

It is a small area of rocky land located to the southern side of the village, and only a few
meters from it. The area is filled with geometrical shapes engraved in stones. Each shape consists
of a reservoir carved in a stone whose volume is about one cubic meter, surrounded by another
reservoir, larger in size but shallower in depth, from which a small canal, engraved in the stone,
emerges and terminates in the first reservoir.
The history of these geometrical shapes, which are engraved in stones, goes back to the
Roman era when they used them to press grapes, and from the grape juice they made their
favorite wines. For this reason the place and the surrounding area were called al-ʿaṣṣārah [‘the
Press’]

15 Sittī Ḥamāmah [literally, “Lady Dove”]

A small sanctuary located in the village center, near the line that divides the two boroughs
(the Upper and the Lower)—precisely, near the southeastern corner of Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAwaḍ’s
home.
In the past, this sanctuary was built from stones as a small chamber that did not exceed a
square meter. When Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAwaḍ built his home near this sanctuary, he preserved it
and kept it standing. The villagers believe that Sittī Ḥamāmah was a blessed woman who has
charisma from God (Glorified and Most High), and that no person ever beseeched her, asking her
for something, without his invocation being answered. For this reason, any villager who wants a
solution to some problem or desires to fulfill a certain matter would go to this sanctuary bringing
with him oil to fill a lamp that exists inside the sanctuary, kindle the lamp, start praying to God in
front of the sanctuary, asking Him to give him what he wants, and then return to his home
satisfied that God will answer his invocation in honor of Sittī Ḥamāmah.

16 The Water Reservoir [ḥāwūz al-miyāh]

It is a reservoir for storing drinking water, built from stone and cement, whose volume
does not exceed 4 x 4 x 3 cubic meters. It was built around 1933. Mr. Mūsā Nāṣir helped build it,
as he then occupied the position of the governor of al-Ramla District, in order to solve the
problem of drinking water, of which the population suffered greatly before that date. [It was
solved] by means of completing a project that resulted in pumping water through iron pipes from
 

the Spring of the village of Shibtīn, which is 6 kilometers to the east of Budrus, and collecting it
in this reservoir, in return for 25 Palestinian pounds to be paid annually by the village to Shibtīn
Spring Water Utility. This project supplied drinking water to five villages, one of which was the
village of Budrus. The women of the village used to go to the reservoir with jugs over their heads
9
in order to fill them with water for the price of one Palestinian millīm per jug to be paid to the
keeper of the reservoir. The Reservoir is still standing today. It is located at the northern entrance
of the village, on the main paved road. In front of it there is a large lot that was and still is used
as the village’s bus stop for the people who are waiting to travel to Ramallah every morning and
return to the village in the evening (see Figure 6). After the village and its homes became
connected directly to a public grid for drinking water in 1978, there was no longer a use for the
reservoir to supply the village with water as it used to be. It became one of the village’s
important distinguished sights.

Figure 6: [The Village’s Reservoir]

The village’s reservoir at the right of the picture and in front of it is the main road towards the
direction of the neighboring village of Qibyā and the lot.

9
One Palestinian pound is equivalent to one hundred qirshs or one thousand milīms. Its value
then was roughly equivalent to a Jordanian dinar.
 

 Fourth: Housing Development

Traditionally the village is divided into two main boroughs: the Upper Borough and the Lower
10
Borough. They are separated by the main road of the village, which is still unpaved. The total
of the old homes in the village reached 65 homes, constructed in residential formations, [each of
which consists of homes] mostly connected to each other, whose owners are related to each other
by blood or marriage. [The homes of] each formation share one common main gate. These old
homes were originally built on a land whose area is estimated to be 100 dunams [about 24.7
acres]. The Upper Borough contains 40 old structures, including al-bad and Abū Dāwūd’s Press,
while the Lower Borough contains 25 old structures, including the Old ʿUmarī Mosque and the
Guest House. All of these structures are extremely old, some of which are called Roman homes,
because they were constructed during the Roman era (see Figure 7).
After 1967, housing development increased significantly in the village (Figure 8). Many
modern homes were built, so that they extended to cover all of the area of al-bayādir and to
reach the outskirt of the neighboring village of Qibyā, which is 2.5 kilometers away from the
village. The number of the presently occupied homes in the village, whether old or new, is
around 215 homes, covering about 2 square kilometers. Among the reasons for this housing
development is the availability of skilled labor and the professions necessary for such a progress
in the village, which were not available before 1967.

Figure 7: Three Views of Old Roman Homes

1. In front of Ḥasan Maḥmūd Ḥusayn’s home.
2. A Roman gate that leads to the yard of Maḥmūd Ḥusayn’s home.
3. A view of old Roman homes and others relatively new.

Figure 8: Two Views Showing an Expanse of Housing Development

1. Some modern homes that are between Budrus and Qibyā
2. A modern housing expanse

10
A borough [ḥārah] is a residential community with well-known borders, which is larger than a
neighborhood [ḥay] in area and population. The Palestinian villages usually consist of more than
one borough. The Upper and Lower Boroughs are so called due to their traditional locations in
relation to the main street, which divides the village into these two boroughs, and due to the
elevation of the lands of these two boroughs: the Upper Borough is located at the right (north) of
the main road and on land that is relatively elevated, and the Lower Borough is located to the left
(south) of the main road and on land that is low.
 

 Fifth: Population Demographics

1 The Budrusite population in the village and in the diaspora and their distribution
according to gender and place of residence
The study showed that the Budrusite population at the end of 1990 who lived in the
village or in the diaspora reached 2,550 persons in contrast with its population in 1922, 1931,
11
1945, and 1961, which was, respectively, 334, 420, 510, and 776 persons. When discussing
their distribution according to place of residence (see Table 1), we must emphasize the fact that
Budrus’s population, as all other Palestinian villages, is divided inside and outside the village.
That is, part of them, whose number is 796, continue to live and reside in the village, and the
remaining population, whose number is 1,754, live in Jordan and other Arab and non-Arab
countries. It should be observed that the number of males in both cases exceeds the number of
females.

Table 1: The Distribution of the Population According to Gender and Place of Residence

Gender Place of Residence

Budrus Diaspora Total
Number % Number % Number %
Males 406 51 936 53.3 1,342 52.6
Females 390 49 818 46.7 1,208 47.4
Total 796 100 1,754 100 2,550 100

Before 1967, most of the people of the village lived in the village with the exception of a
small number of people who worked outside. After the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the
majority of the population left the village and settled in Amman until the present time. It is
12
difficult for them to return to the village, because they cannot obtain “family reunion” permits.
Hence they refrained from visiting their relatives and the village, and it became difficult for them
to conduct such visits without obtaining, through one of their close relatives, special permission
for this purpose from the Israeli occupation authority.

2 The population distribution according to age group and place of residence

Table 2 shows that that about 57% of the total Budrusites in the village and in the
diaspora are of the age group 20 years or younger, while about 6% of them are 61 years or older.
We should observe also that the percentage of those whose ages are 61 years or older is higher
among the village’s residents than among those who live in the diaspora, for these percentages
are, respectively, 10.7% and 3.8%. As for the percentages of the age group 20 or younger, and 21
to 30, they are about the same among those who live in the village and those in the diaspora.

11
The source is Bilādinā Filistīn, 4th volume, Second Part, “the Jaffa Communities,” p. 565.
12
A document that is given by the occupation authority to permit those Budrusites who live
outside the village to return to it and live in it if they so desire.
 

 Table 2: The Distribution of the Population According to Age Group and Place of Residence

Place of Residence
Age Group Budrus Diaspora Total
Number % Number % Number %
20 or younger 441 55.4 1,002 57.1 1,443 56.6
21 – 30 127 16 266 14,6 383 15
31 – 40 92 11.5 187 10.7 279 11
41 – 50 30 3.8 142 8.1 172 6.7
51 – 60 21 2.6 101 5.7 122 4.8
61 or older 85 10.7 66 3.8 151 5.9
Total 796 100 1754 100 2,550 100

3 The distribution of the heads of households according to place of residence and age group
The number of the households that still reside in Budrus reached, as we mentioned
previously in the Introduction, 160, that is, about 34.6% of the total households that are covered
in this study. However, since six of the heads of the households that reside in the village work
outside the West Bank, the number of the households that reside in Budrus is reduced to 154, as
shown in Figure 9, and the number of households that reside in the diaspora is increased to 309
instead of the original 303 households. To be specific, the study findings showed that 51% of the
surveyed heads of households reside with their families in Jordan, 5% of them reside in Kuwait,
13
and [5% in] non-Arab countries (Figure 9).
It is worth mentioning that 23 heads of households among the 309 who reside in the
diaspora, that is, in Jordan and other Arab countries, carry West-Bank ID Cards, which give them
the right to live and reside in the West Bank should they desire to do so.
As for the distribution of the surveyed heads of households according to age group, the
study findings showed that the highest percentage among them (30%) were in the age group 31 –
40 years, followed by the age group 21 – 30 years, where their percentage reached 20%. The
heads of households in Budrus and the diaspora whose ages did not exceed 20 years were only 2
(Figure 10).
Table 3 shows that the percentage of the heads of households whose ages are 31 – 40
years and who reside outside the West Bank is slightly higher than the percentage of those who
reside in the village and whose ages are of the same group. But these percentages differ
significantly when we consider the age groups 41 – 50 years and 51 – 60 years, for the
percentage of those who live outside the West Bank is much higher than the percentage of those
in the village. The opposite is exactly true when we consider the heads of households of the age
group 61 and older. Their percentage in the village is much higher than their percentage in the
diaspora; they are 27.5% and 11.6%, respectively. This means that more than a quarter of the
heads of households who reside in the village are older than 60 years.

This percentage changed after the events that took place in the Arabian Gulf [i.e., the first Gulf
13

War], specifically in 1991, when some of the families had to leave Kuwait and return to Jordan.
 

  

Table 3: The Distribution of the Heads of Households According to Age Group and Place of
Residence

Place of Residence
Age Group Budrus Diaspora Total
Number % Number % Number %
20 or younger 2 1.3 0 0 2 0.4%
21 – 30 44 27.5 49 16.2 93 20.1
31 – 40 45 28 94 31 139 30
41 – 50 14 8.8 74 24.4 88 19
51 – 60 11 6.9 51 16.8 62 13.4
60 or older 44 27.5 35 11.6 79 17.1
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

4 The distribution of the heads of households according to place of birth

Table 4 shows that the village of Budrus and the West Bank were the birthplaces of 96%
of the surveyed heads of households. As for the remaining ones (4%), they were born in the
diaspora.

Table 4: The Distribution of the Heads of Households According to the Place of Birth

Place of Birth Number %

Budrus 441 95.3
West Bank outside Budrus 4 0.7
Jordan outside West Bank 15 3.4
Syria 1 0.2
Iraq 2 0.4
Total 463 100

5 The distribution of households according to their size

The study showed that 25% of the surveyed households consist of 5 to 6 members, 6%
did not exceed 2 members, and 5% consist of 11 or more members. The study findings also
showed that the place of residence of the head of household is correlated with the size of the
household: the percentage of the households that consists of 5 or more members is greater among
the households that live in the diaspora than among the households that still live in the village.
The converse is true regarding the households whose size does not exceed 4 members (Table 5).
Also, the level of education of the head of household is correlated with the size of the
household: Table 6 shows that the percentage of the heads of households who have large families
(9 or more members) decreases as the level of education of the head of household increases,
while the percentage of the heads of households who have small families, 1 – 4 members
(especially those that consists of 3 – 4 members), increases as the level of education of the head

 

of household increases [Table 6]. This correlation, however, does not seem to be applicable to the
heads of households who are illiterate.

Table 5: The Correlation between the Place of Residence and the Size of the Household

Size of Household Place of Residence Total

Budrus Diaspora
Number % Number % Number %
1–2 38 21.3 40 13.2 74 16
3–4 46 28.8 62 20.5 108 23.3
5–6 33 20.6 83 27.4 116 25.1
7–8 23 14.4 60 19.8 83 17.9
9 – 10 17 10.5 41 13.5 58 12.5
11 or more 7 4.4 17 6.6 24 5.2
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

Table 6: The Correlation between the Level of Education of the Head of Household and the Size
of the Household

Size of Level of Education of the Head of Household Total

Household Less than High High School Community College or
School Higher
Number % Number % Number % Number %
1–2 43 14.7 7 14.9 13 13.3 63 16
3–4 52 17.8 12 25.5 36 36.7 100 23.3
5–6 69 23.6 13 27.7 31 31.6 113 25.1
7–8 57 19.5 9 19.1 13 13.3 79 17.9
9 – 10 48 16.4 5 10.6 6 6.1 58 12.5
11 or more 23 7.9 1 2.1 0 0 24 5.2
14
Total 292 100 47 100 98 100 437 100

6 The distribution of the heads of households who reside in Budrus according their having
children who live in the diaspora
The study showed that 95.6% of the heads of households who reside in Budrus do not
have sons or daughters who live in the West Bank outside the village. Only 4.4% of them stated
that they have [collectively] about 7 sons or daughters who live in the West Bank outside the
village—specifically, in the city of Ramallah, and the villages of Yatmā, Naʿlīn, Qibyā, and
al-Madyah, either due to marriage or to live with parents.

14
There were no answers to the question regarding the level of education of the head of
household for 26 persons either due to death or simply due to a lack of answer, so that the total
number of respondents in this table is less than the number of the surveyed families in this study.
 

 In contrast the percentage of the heads of households who reside in Budrus and who have
sons or daughters living outside the West Bank is much greater than the percentage of those who
have children living in the West Bank outside Budrus; these percentages are, respectively, 26.3%
and 4.4%. On the other hand, 73.7% of the heads of households who reside in Budrus stated that
all of their sons and daughters live with them in Budrus.

7 The distribution of unmarried children according to place of residence

Regarding unmarried children, the study showed that the number of [unmarried] males
reached 900, that is, 35% of the total Budrusites who live in the village or in the diaspora, and
that the number of unmarried females is 768, that is, 30%. This implies that 65% of the total
population in the village and in the diaspora are still unmarried or under the age of marriage.

8 The villagers who are octogenarians or widows

The number of villagers whose ages exceed 80 are 26 persons, among whom 16 are
males and the rest are females. The study showed that 6 of [these 26 persons] live in the village
alone and the remaining 20 live with their children. As for the number of the widows in the
village, it reached 21, 8 of whom live alone and the rest live with their children.

 

 Sixth: The Social and Familial Demographics of the Population

1 Classifying the population into Qays and Yaman

Traditionally the tribes of Palestine are classified according to their roots into Qaḥṭānī
Yamanites, which are the majority of the Palestinian population, and ʿAdnānī Qaysites. This
division is reflected, especially in the past, in the form of tribal feuds between the Qays and the
Yaman between the inhabitants of [different] villages or among the inhabitants of the same
village, due to the practices and traditions that distinguish the Qaysites and the Yamanites.
Conflicts and even wars would break out between them for trivial reasons. Perhaps, the most
obvious form of this tribal feud took place during weddings, especially when a Qaysite family
would marry into a Yamanite family, or conversely. During a Yamanite wedding, the bride would
be dressed in a white gown (the color of the Yamanite flag), and during a Qaysite wedding, the
bride would be dressed in a red gown (the color of the Qaysite flag). If the bride is Qaysite and
her bridegroom is Yamanite, there would be a dispute about the color of the bride’s gown when
she exits her father’s home. The solution might be that the color the bride wears would be
15
changed halfway during the bride’s fardah journey; some of them used to solve the problem by
[dressing the bride in] a red gown with white stripes, or in a red cloak over a white gown, where
the bride would remove her red cloak halfway [during the journey].
Budrus was no different from other Palestinian villages in that the population of the
village was traditionally divided into Qays and Yaman, with all the implications of this division
regarding their loyalties, practices, grouping, and relations to each other, even regarding their
places of residence, for the residents of the Upper Borough were traditionally made exclusively
of the ʿAwaḍ family and its branches, which belong to the Qaysite tribe, and the residents of the
Lower Borough consist exclusively of the ʿAbdulkarīm family and its branches, which belong to
the Yamanite tribe.
Feuds, which were severe in the past due to tribal identity, began to weaken during the
British Mandate, so that ʿĀrif al-ʿĀrif stated in his detailed book about the history of Jerusalem
that tribal fanaticism had gone and vanished. In reality, however, the feud between the Qaysites
and the Yamanites was transformed, with the passing of years, into a kind of playful rivalry,
which replaced the conflict of the past with sport competition and equestrian games, such as
trying to steal the white flag that a [Yamanite] bride carries. In the village of Budrus, people’s
traditional tribal identity as Qaysite and Yamanite has ceased to exist since about 1948, and their
identity as Budrusites became much stronger than in any time prior to that date. This was due to
the prevalence of social consciousness and education among the youth, and to the fact that the
village was located on the front lines, which separated the occupied part of Palestine from its
Arabic part after 1948. After that date the danger of Israel to all the Palestinian villages that are
located on the front lines was increased, and with it the villagers’ attachment to their villages
increased: they forgot their past disputes and became determined to protect their villages against
any possible attack. This was manifested by all their young men joining the national guards,
which were very popular then.

15
The fardah of the bride is the group of people who accompany the bride during her short
journey from her father’s home to her husband’s home.
 

2 Families and [their] branches
The people of Budrus inside and outside the village belong to two main families: the
ʿAwaḍ family, or as it is called colloquially “ʿAwaẓ,” and the ʿAbdulkarīm family. As it is
mentioned above, the ʿAwaḍ family and its branches are identified with the Qaysites, and the
ʿAbdulkarīm family and its branches are identified with the Yamanites. 66.9% of the village’s
households belong to the ʿAwaḍ family and 33.1% of them to the ʿAbdulkarīm family (see
Figure 12). To the ʿAwaḍ family belong 9 branches, whereas to the ʿAbdulkarīm family belong
five branches (see Table 7).
The study showed that the branch family of Maḥmūd Ḥusayn is the largest branch of the
principal family of ʿAwaḍ, since about one quarter of the households that constitute this principal
family and 16.7% of the total village’s households belong to this branch family. Next comes the
branch family of Khalīfah, to which 22.6% of the households that constitute the principal family
of ʿAwaḍ belong as well as 15.2% of the total village’s households. As for the principal family of
ʿAbdulkarīm, its biggest branches are ʿIlayyān and then Yūsuf, to which 32.7% and 23.5%,
respectively, of the households that constitute this principal family belong.

Table 7: The Distribution of the Heads of Households According to the Branch Families

The Branch Family Number of Percentage of the Percentage of the

Households Total Village’s Households That
Households Constitute the
Principal Family

 

1. ʿAwaḍ 310 66.9 100
1.1. Maḥmūd Ḥusayn 77 16.7 24.8
1.2. Khalīfah 70 15.2 22.6
1.3. Abū ʿŪdah 40 8.6 12.9
1.4. ʿAwaḍ 37 8 12
1.5. Khalaf 28 6 9
16
1.6. Yaʿqūb 21 4.5 6.8
1.7. Ḥusayn al-ʿAlī 15 3.2 4.8
1.8. ʿAnkah 14 3 4.5
1.9. Ṣafā 8 1.7 2.6

2. ʿAbdulkarīm 153 33.1 100

2.1. ʿIlayyān 50 10.8 32.7
2.2. Yūsuf 36 7.6 23.5
2.3. Murār 35 7.6 23.5
2.4. ʿAllān 19 4.1 12.4
2.5. Ṣubḥ 13 3 8.5

Total 463 100

3 Familial relationship between a husband and his wife

It is clear from Figure 13 that 46% of the heads of household married relatives, while
28% of them married from the village but without their wives being their relatives. The figure
also shows that about 26% of the heads of households preferred to marry from outside the
16
The man after whom our family is named is Yaʿqūb (I Anglicized the name as ‘Yaqub’). He
had three sons, ʿAbdullāh, Muṣliḥ, and ʿAbdurabbah, in this order, and a daughter, Fāṭimah.
ʿAbdurabbah is my paternal grandfather. He was married to Niʿmah ʿIlayyān. The family of
ʿIlayyān is one of the branch families of the principal family of ʿAbdulkarīm. ʿAbdurabbah and
Niʿmah had two children, my aunt, Tuḥfah, and my father, Maḥmūd. ʿAbdurabbah was drafted to
serve with the Turkish army during World War I. He disappeared without a trace in the war and
never returned. We presume that he was killed at the Russian front. Niʿmah was pregnant with
Maḥmūd when his father was drafted to the war. Hence Maḥmūd never saw or knew his father.
He was raised by his uncle ʿAbdullāh. Muḥmūd’s ancestry, therefore, goes back to both principal
families of ʿAwaḍ and ʿAbdulkarīm, and thus, to both tribes of Qays and Yaman. Maḥmūd was
one of the first Budrusites not to marry into one of the village’s families. My mother, Imtithāl
Ḥamdullāh al-Munayyir, is from the city of Jaffa. Her ancestry goes back to the tribe of Qays,
whose roots can be traced to the region of Hejaz in present day Saudi Arabia. If this is correct,
then the children of Maḥmūd can trace their heritage to the regions of Hejaz and Yemen. This is
as much an “Arab” as one can get. However, I am of the heretical opinion that we are not as Arab
as our elders would like us to believe. Many members of my mother’s and father’s families
exhibit physical characteristics that are not typically Arab. So I believe that both families have
mixed Arab and non-Arab roots in their ancestries. To avoid a protracted debate, I won’t
elaborate on this opinion. (Translator’s note)
 

village. This is another proof that the [traditional] implication of familial relationship that
relatives ought to remain close and connected to each other through marriage is being
contradicted [by the practice of the villagers].

 

 Seventh: The Economic Activities of the Population

1 The type of work [performed] by the heads of households and their wives
Figure 14 shows that 14% of the heads of households do not work, while a majority of
them (56%) are self-employed. As for those who work in the public sector (except for those who
work as teachers), their percentage reached 14%, in contrast to 7% who works in the private
sector. There are 5% of the heads of households who work as teachers.
If we compare the heads of households who still live in the village to the heads of
households who live outside the West Bank regarding their types of work, we see, according to
Table 8, that the vast majority (73.1%) of the heads of households who reside in the village have
private businesses, such as farming and other private enterprises, because other forms of
employment are not available. This is contrasted with the 47.5% of the heads of households who
live outside the West Bank and have private businesses. Also, the percentage of those who work
as teachers among the heads of households who live in Budrus is higher than of those who work
as teachers among the ones who live in the diaspora.
Regarding the heads of households who live outside the West Bank, a significant portion
of them (21.1%) work in the public sector but not as teachers.
The study disclosed that among the wives 97.2% do not work for wages, but rather they
devote their time to homemaking and childcare. 30.7% of those who are employed (13 women)
work in the educational sector as teachers, 46% in the private sector (as cashiers, bookkeepers,
seamstresses, and weavers), and 23.3% in the public sector other than education. It is worth
noting that a non-negligible number of the wives and husbands in Budrus work for wages in
agriculture and construction with Israel due to the unavailability of any financial support for
17
them from the ṣumūd fund that is allocated to the occupied Palestinian territories.

Table 8: The Distribution of Heads of Households According to the Place of Residence and the
Type of Work

Type of Work Budrus Diaspora Total

Number % Number % Number %
Self-employed 117 73.1 144 47.5 261 56.3
Employed in the private sector 3 1.9 28 9.2 31 6.7
Employed in the public sector 3 1.9 64 21.1 67 14.5
(other than education)
Employed as a teacher 10 6.3 14 4.6 24 5.2
Do not work 26 16.3 41 13.6 67 14.5
Other employments 1 0.6 12 4 13 2.8
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

17
The ṣumūd fund is money provided by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that is
designated for Palestinian families who live in the occupied territories. The fund has dried up a
long time ago. (Translator’s note)
 

2 The type of work [performed] by the children who are working and unmarried of both
genders
Regarding the type of work [performed] by the male children who are unmarried,
whether in the village or in the diaspora, the study showed that being self-employed or working
in the private sector is the occupation of a greater percentage among the male children who
reside in Budrus than among those who live in the diaspora, just as is the case with the heads of
their households. The converse is true when it comes to the unmarried females who are
self-employed. Unmarried children of either gender who work in governmental organizations are
found only in the households that live in the diaspora, if they are compared to the households that
still live in the village (Table 9). Similar to the situation of husbands and wives, there is a
significant number of unmarried males and females in the village who work with Israel in the
areas of agriculture and construction, in order to supplement their income in the absence of any
financial support that might be provided to them by alternative sources.

Table 9: The Distribution of Working Unmarried Children of Either Gender in Budrus and in the
Diaspora According to the Type of Work

Type of Work Budrus Diaspora Total

Males Females Males Females
Number % Number % Number % Number % Number %
Self-employed 20 77 0 0 58 65.2 7 50 85 65.9
Governmental organizations 0 0 0 0 14 15.7 7 50 21 16.3

 

International and Arabic 1 3.8 0 0 17 19.1 0 0 18 13.9
organizations
Private sector 5 19.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 3.9
Total 26 100 0 0 89 100 14 100 129 100
3 The types of professions available to the population that reside in the village
There is in the village currently a number of professions, in addition to farming, the most
important of which is construction; 25 people work in this profession. Auto mechanics and
teaching are equal in the number of their practitioners; 6 people work in each profession. 4
people work as electricians, while 2 people work in each of carpentry, blacksmithing, and
medical supplies.

 

 Eight: Education and Its Origin in the Village

1 The history of education and its origin in the village

In the past, about 90 years ago, education in the village was conducted according to the
18
method of katātīb. Fate has it that at that time there was in Budrus a young man, whose age did
19
not exceed 14 years, and who was educated at the hands of the Rufātite Shaykhs in the
neighboring village of Niʿlīn. This young man was the late Shaykh ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh,
20
who met with the people of the village and offered to teach their children. They welcomed this
idea and helped him accomplish it. Indeed, on 20 April 1901, he became the first teacher in the
village. He began teaching in the ʿUmarī Mosque, where students would sit on straw mats and
write using primitive ink and straws or chicken feathers instead of the modern pen used today.
21
Every student paid 1 qirsh at the end of every month as compensation for his education.
In the case that he couldn’t, he had the option of paying 5 eggs or whatever agricultural products
that he could afford. The number of students at that time did not exceed 15, and their ages were
between 7 and 12 years.
Among the most important activities in which the students engaged was to maintain the
cleanliness of the village. At the end of the school day, they, with their teacher, would walk the
22
streets of the village cleaning and instructing [others how to clean]. Also, they would put sūlār
in the wells that were not suitable for drinking, which were plentiful in the village, to kill the
mosquitos and control their spread. They carried out this task weekly. Finally, they would
perform plays and oratorical activities, which aimed at addressing all types of social problems of
the village.

18
The method of katātīb is a primitive method for teaching young children how to write and read
the Qurʾān. It is still practiced in the remote regions of the Muslim World. In this method the
children gather in front of a “teacher,” who recites and writes on a board a few verses of the
Qurʾān. The children copy what he writes and repeat what he recites. The method accomplishes
its objective in a slow cumulative process. It is an effective method, in the sense that the
graduates from the katātīb actually learn how to write and read the Qurʾān in Arabic, but it is
totally useless as linguistic education, since almost all its graduates cannot read, write, or
understand classical Arabic outside the Qurʾān. (Translator’s note)
19
The Rufātites Shaykhs (al-mashāyikh al-rufātiyyah) were a group of teachers who operated a
madrasah in the village of Niʿlīn that taught all the traditional religious sciences, such as
jurisprudence, Ḥadīth, and Qurʾānic commentary; linguistic sciences, such as grammar,
literature, and rhetoric; and some modern sciences, such as basic arithmetic, geometry, history,
and geography. It was the closest thing villagers had to modern education. (Translator’s note)
20
Shaykh ʿAbdullāh, after whom my brother was named, is my paternal great uncle. After the
disappearance of my grandfather, ʿAbdurabbah, at the Russian front during World War I, Shaykh
ʿAbdullāh raised my father, Maḥmūd, from infancy. My father grew up thinking that Shaykh
ʿAbdullāh was his father. He learned the story of his real father later in life. (Translator’ note)
21
A Palestinian pound, then, consisted of 100 qirshs. (Translator’s note)
22
An old chemical compound that was used to suffocate mosquito larvae. (Translator’s note)
 

 After a student completed the fourth grade, which was the highest grade in the school, his
23
education would be complete, including the studying of the entire Qurʾān. For this occasion the
teacher was keen to organize a celebratory party in which the students, their parents, and the
villagers participate. The parents of the graduating students were required to buy new suits for
24
the graduates complete with red ṭarābīsh , and to bring horses, so that every graduate would ride
a horse. They rode through the streets of the village, while copies of the Nobel Qurʾān were
placed before them. During this ride, all the women and men of the village would accompany the
graduates, where the women would sing and the men chant beautiful chants until the time of
sunset. At that time, the villagers would retire to the Guest House, and the families of the
graduating students would offer them food and drink.
After Shaykh ʿAbdullāh spent about 21 years as a nonofficial teacher of the village, he
moved in 1921 to work as a teacher at the [public] school of the neighboring village of Bayt
25
Nabālah. He left his brother Shaykh Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh to be the teacher of the village;
he taught from 1922 till 1937. He was followed by Mr. Aḥmad ʿAbdulmahdī from the village of
Qaṭrah, al-Ramla District, though he taught for one year only, that is, school year 1937/38. Until
then the school was housed in the village’s Old Mosque. In the year 1938, Shaykh ʿAbdullāh
returned to teach in the village as an employee of the Department of Education of the British
Mandate Government. He became the first official teacher in the village. After he returned, it
was decided that a new school would be built for the village, which would be located at its
western side. That was the first public school in the village.

2 The construction the first al-Gharbiyyah School of Budrus

This school was constructed in 1938 during the British Mandate. The villagers
contributed half the cost of its construction; the Department of Education contributed the other
half. The school was officially opened in 1939. The students were moved, with their four classes,
from the village’s Old Mosque to this school after it became ready for instruction. The highest
grade in the schools was the fourth grade. The students at that time were distributed to its four
classes as follows: 12 students were in the first grade, 10 students were in the second grade, 9
students were in the third grade, and 8 students were in the final, fourth grade. Their total was 39
students.
The school consisted of one room only, without any amenities, except for a reservoir for
drinking water. The size of the room was 49 square meters. Shaykh ʿAbdullāh taught first in this
23
One of the most important achievements of Shaykh ʿAbdullāh was that he made modern
education not only accepted by the villagers, but also cherished and prized. It was very important
to make it clear that modern education was fully compatible with the families’ religious
aspirations for their children. Hence he made the study of the entire Qurʾān an essential goal of
every pupil’s education. As we will read below, he enacted all sorts of traditions for the villagers
to celebrate their children’s educations. It should be mentioned too that Shaykh ʿAbdullāh in
principle did not restrict the school to boys only. However, education for girls was not common
at all. As we will see later, by 1945 only 4 girls completed the fourth grade. (Translator’s note)
24
Plural of ṭarbūsh. It is a traditional red head cover, whose use became very popular during the
Ottoman Empire among the educated class of the population. [In English, it is known as a “fez”.]
25
Shaykh Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb is the father of the author of this study, Dr. Ṣalāḥ Muṣliḥ Yaʿqūb.
(Translator’s note)
 

school, followed by Mr. Ramzī al-Shawīsh from Bayt Dajin, al-Lydd District, and then Mr.
26
Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb.
Teaching in this school was halted and its students left it in the year 1951 due to the
danger of its location for their lives after the end of the First Arab-Israeli War. Often the Israeli
soldiers would fire at the school because of its closeness to the border or the “Rhodes Line,”
which separated the two parts of Palestine—the occupied part and the Arab part. In 1967 after
the Second Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli army bombed the school and destroyed it (see Figure
15).
After the village lost its first al-Gharbiyyah School in 1951, teaching was transferred for
the second time to the village’s Old Mosque. The use of the mosque as a school continued for a
whole year; after that a house in the village, which belonged to Mr. ʿAbdulḥamīd Ḥamd, was
rented and used as a school for another year. Then it was moved for the third time to a room
owned by Mr. Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb, which continued to be used as a school until 1955.

Figure 15: [The First al-Gharbiyyah School]

A view of the western side, which was taken from inside Imām ʿAlī Sanctuary, showing (on the
left) the location of the destroyed first al-Gharbiyyah School and the kīnā tree, which belonged
to it; also showing the border that was near the school, rows of olive trees, and the star of Abū
Ḥadhwah

3 The construction of the current al-Gharbiyyah School of Budrus

Due to the pressing need of the village for a permanent school that was suitable for the
growing number of students and their needs for amenities and a playground, the villagers
decided to build another, new school in spite of their dire financial situation. Because they were
unable to cover the cost of constructing a new school from their own resources, they sought the
assistance of various governmental organizations. The Jordanian army answered their request.
With the cooperation of the villagers, a school for boys was built. It consisted of two rooms; the
size of each one was 30 square meters. The two rooms were ready for instruction in 1955. The
school was constructed on land whose size was estimated to be 8 dunams [about 1.97 acres], and
which included a soccer field and a volleyball court. Near the school, a large well was built to
collect rainwater for drinking; it was constructed by the students of the British University of
Bristol through the Arab Construction Project of Jericho. The first to teach in the current school
of Budrus was Mr. Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb. The school comprised then only three grades, as
the third grade was the highest grade in it. The students would move, after completing the third
grade, to the neighboring Qibyā’s secondary school in order to continue their education. The
number of its students during its first year was only 40.

4 Constructing the girls’ school

Until 1945, there were in Budrus only 4 girls who completed the fourth grade, and this
number increased to 6 girls after 1945. It is clear from these data, that education for girls in the
village was not common at all. In 1961, the first school for girls in the village was opened, and it

26
Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb is the son of Shaykh ʿAbdullāh and the husband of my aunt, Tuḥfah.
(Translator’s note)
 

comprised only one grade—the first grade. The school consisted of only one room, which was
rented from Shaykh ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb; its size was 36 square meters. The school contained
during its first year 14 students. Its first teacher was Iḥtilāl Isḥāq al-Maṣrī from Jerusalem, who
was also the first female teacher to be a government employee in the village; she was followed
27
by Naẓmiyyah ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb from Budrus, then by Samīrah al-Ḥarbāwī from Jerusalem,
and other female teachers after that.

5 The educational services available for the children of the village presently
The educational services in the village progressed significantly if compared to the
28
services available prior to 1948. There is now in the village a coed boys’ school, which begins
with the second grade and terminates with the sixth grade; it contains 4 male teachers (see
Figures 16 and 17). In addition to this school, there is another coed girls’ school that covers the
first grade, and contains only one female teacher (Figure 18). The distribution of the students
enrolled in these two schools according to grade during the school year 1989/1990 is shown in
Table 10.
Figure 16: [The Coed Boys’ School]
Two views of the coed boys’ school before the students entered their classes
Figure 17: [The Coed Boys’ School]
Two views of the fourth and fifth grades inside their classrooms with their teachers

Figure 18: [The Coed Girls’ School]

A view of the coed girls’ school showing some of the students in the first grade with their teacher

In addition to the students enrolled in the village’s schools, as indicated in Table 10, there
are 66 male and female students who study in Qibyā’s middle school for boys, Niʿlīn’s high
school for boys, and Niʿlīn’s [secondary] school for girls. Their distribution according to grade
during the school year 1989/1990 is shown in Table 11.
It is clear from these numbers that the females in the village are still less fortunate than
males in entering schools. It is worth noting that the village of Qibyā is 2.5 kilometers to the east
of Budrus and the village of Niʿlīn is about 5.5 kilometers to the southeast of Budrus.
Table 10: The Distribution of Students in the Village’s Schools during the School Year 1989/90
Grade Coed Boys’ School Coed Girls’ School Total
Boys Girls Boys Girls
First grade -- -- 12 8 20
Second grade 13 12 -- -- 25
Third grade 14 12 -- -- 26
Fourth grade 12 14 -- -- 26
Fifth grade 17 8 -- -- 25
27
Naẓmiyyah ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb is the daughter of Shaykh ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb.
28
Both schools in the village are coed. They are called “boys’ school” and “girls’ school” to
indicate their history. The first school started as a boys’ school and the second school as a girls’
school. (Translator’s note)
 

Sixth grade 17 4 -- -- 21
Total 73 50 12 8 143
Table 11: The Distribution of the Village Students in the Middle and High Schools of the
Villages of Qibyā and Niʿlīn during the School Year 1989/90

Grade Qibyā’s Middle Niʿlīn’s High Niʿlīn’s [Secondary] Total

School for Boys School for Boys School for Girls
Middle school – 1st grade 13 -- 4 17
Middle school– 2nd grade 11 -- 4 15
Middle school – 3rd grade 12 -- 2 14
High school – 1st grade -- 12 -- 12
High school – 2nd grade -- 2 -- 2
High school – 3rd grade -- 6 -- 6
Total 36 20 10 66

As for the students who are enrolled in community colleges or universities, and who live
in the village, there were only 3 during the academic year 1989/90 (two males and one female).

6 The kindergarten
It was established in 1975. Administratively it was affiliated with the Sport Club of the
village, which later halted due to inadequate financial resources and lack of support. One female
teacher worked in the kindergarten, as well as a woman who supervised the distribution of meals,
which were provided by Catholic Charities and other charitable organizations, as assistance for
the children of the village; these organizations operated through the Office of Social Services in
the city of Ramallah.
The kindergarten received financial support from the village’s [Sport] Club before it
halted. The funds came from the monthly dues paid by its members and from the monthly tuition
paid by the families of the children who were enrolled in the kindergarten. Due to the financial
difficulty that the Club faced, the lack of support from charitable organizations, the cessation of
the meals program, and the unavailability of a permanent place for the kindergarten—as its
supervisors moved it sometimes to the village’s Old Mosque or to other places that were totally
unsuitable—the kindergarten halted for a whole two years. The United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in the later part of 1991, provided financial
29
support to the village, through its Educational Committee, in the amount of 20,500 US dollars
to help in the construction of a permanent building for the kindergarten and in purchasing the
needed furniture and other supplies, as well as to help support programs that concern adult
education and literacy, especially among women, and that concern increasing women’s income
and improving their economic role by introducing and adopting limited projects, such as sewing,
embroidery (see Figure 19), home gardening, raising chickens and rabbits of higher quality, and
other projects.

29
This committee consists of Mr. Maḥmūd Ḥasan Maḥmūd as a Chair, and the following
members: Ibrāhīm Salīm Ibrāhīm, Maḥmūd ʿIlayyān ʿAwaḍ, Ḥasan Ḥāmid Ḥusayn, Ḥasan Khalīl
Ḥasan, Aḥmad Muḥammad Mūsā, Muḥammad Aḥmad Ḥannūn, and Ḥusnī Ḥusayn
ʿAbdulkhāliq.
 

 Figure 19: Two Views of Samples of Embroidery That Were Produced By the Village Women
1. Embroidery on pillowcases and cushion covers
2. Embroidery on women’s dresses
This financial support contributed to the reestablishment of the kindergarten, as a
temporary place was rented for this purpose and was supplied with the necessary equipment.
Also a teacher was hired, who holds a BA in education and psychology. She works now under
the direction of the Educational Committee, which will move this kindergarten to its new,
permanent building as soon as the construction is completed. The construction of this building,
which consists of three classrooms and another room for the administration, is currently
underway, and it is expected to be completed at the start of the school year 1992/1993.
It is worth mentioning that the villagers have contributed actively to the fulfillment of this
project. One villager, whose name is Maḥmūd Ḥusayn ʿIlayyān, and who is a master builder,
volunteered to build the building without compensation, if the Educational Committee would
provide him with the construction supplies. All the young men of the village helped him in the
construction, working together as brothers united in their concern for the welfare of their village;
they are intent on delivering the completed building as soon as possible.

7 The educational level of the heads of households and of the members of their households
(7.A) The educational level of the husbands and wives and the type of their specialization
Regarding the educational level of the male heads of households and of their wives,
Figure 20 shows that illiteracy among the wives is much greater than among the husbands, as
expected. The study showed that 133 wives among a total of 463 (that is, 29%) cannot read or
write, compared to 34 husbands (that is, 7%) among the same total. The study also showed that
the majority of husbands and wives (56% and 54%, respectively) have an educational level that
is less than high school, whereas only 10% among each group have high school diplomas. As for
those who graduated from community colleges or universities, they are a minority: the
percentage of community college graduates among the husbands and wives is 11% and 4%,
respectively, and of university graduates is 10% and 2%, respectively.
Regarding the distribution of the university graduates among husbands and wives
according to the degrees they received, the study showed that 42 husbands among a total of 47
received BA’s [or BS’s], 3 received MA’s [or MS’s], and 2 received PhD’s, compared to 10 wives
who completed university education: 8 received BA’s, 1 received an MA, and 1 received a PhD.
(See Figure 20.)
As for the type of specialization of the husbands and wives who graduated from
community colleges or universities, the study showed that engineering is the most common
specialization among the men, and literature, linguistics, and social and political sciences are the
preferred specializations among the women. (See Tables 12 and 13.)
The findings of the study showed that the familial heritage of the heads of households is
not conclusive in determining their level of education (Table 14), as the percentage of illiterate or
those who completed high school is approximately the same among the members of the ʿAwaḍ
family and the ʿAbdulkarīm family. However the percentage of those who graduated from a
community college or a university is higher in the ʿAwaḍ family than the ʿAbdulkarīm family.

 

 The findings of the study also showed that the place of residence of the head of
household is correlated with his level of education (Table 15), as it became clear that the
percentage of the illiterate heads of households is higher among those who live in the village
than among those who live outside the West Bank. The converse is true regarding those who
graduated from community colleges and universities.

Table 12: The Type of Specialization of Those Who Graduated from Community Colleges and
Universities

Type of Specialization Husbands Wives Total

Number % Number % Number %
Engineering 13 25.5 1 5.5 14 20.3
Accounting, Business Administration 10 19.6 2 11.1 12 17.4
Education, Religion 9 17.7 5 27.8 14 20.3
Literature, Linguistics, Social and Political 7 13.7 5 27.8 12 17.4
Sciences
Computer Science 4 7.8 2 11.1 6 8.7
Economics, Finance 2 3.9 0 0 2 2.9
Pharmacology, Medical Lab Technology 2 3.9 1 5.6 3 4.4
Science, Mathematics, Chemistry 2 3.9 0 0 2 2.9
Vocational Education 1 2 0 0 1 1.4
Police Academy 1 2 0 0 1 1.4
Nursing 0 0 2 11.1 2 2.9
Total 51 100 18 100 69 100

Table 13: The Type of Specialization of Those Who Graduated from Universities among
Husbands and Wives

Type of Specialization Husbands Wives Total

Number % Number % Number %
Engineering 14 29.8 2 20 16 28
Literature, Linguistics, Social and Political 9 19.1 3 30 12 21.1
Sciences
Accounting, Business Administration 6 12.8 1 10 7 12.3
Education, Religion 6 12.8 1 10 7 12.3
Science, Mathematics, Chemistry 4 8.5 1 10 5 8.8
Medicine 4 8.5 1 10 5 8.8
Pharmacology, Medical Lab Technology 3 6.4 0 0 3 5.3
Computer Science 1 2.1 0 0 1 1.7
Journalism 0 0 1 10 1 1.7
Total 47 100 10 100 57 100

 

Table 14: The Relation between the Educational Level of the Head of Household and His
Familial Heritage

Educational Level ʿAwaḍ Family ʿAbdulkarīm Family Total

Number % Number % Number %
Not mentioned 18 5.8 8 5.2 26 5.6
Illiterate 24 7.8 10 6.5 34 7.3
Less than high school 161 51.9 97 63.4 258 55.7
High school 30 9.7 17 11.1 47 10.2
Community college 37 11.9 14 9.2 51 11
University 40 12.9 7 4.6 47 10.2
Total 310 100 153 100 463 100

Table 15: The Relation between the Place of Residence and the Educational Level of the Head of
Household
30
Educational Level Budrus Diaspora Total
Number % Number % Number %
Not mentioned 22 13.8 4 1.3 26 5.6
Illiterate 22 13.8 12 4 34 7.3
Less than high school 74 46.2 184 60.7 258 55.7
High school 19 11.8 28 9.2 47 10.2
Community college 15 9.4 36 11.9 51 11
University 8 5 39 12.9 47 10.2
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

Figure 20: The Educational Level of Husbands and Wives

30
In the original, the columns for “Budrus” and “Diaspora” are erroneously transposed.
(Translator’s note)
 

(7.B) The educational level and the type of specialization of the unmarried members of the
households of both genders
The study disclosed that about 43% of these people are under the age of schooling,
whereas 57% of them are enrolled in schools at various levels. Table 16 indicates that the vast
majority of the unmarried members of the [surveyed] households, of both genders, whether in the
village or in the diaspora, are still in elementary schools. Those who are enrolled in secondary
schools, community colleges, or universities are a small minority if compared with those in
elementary schools, especially among the students who live in the village. However, the
percentage of the students, of both genders, who are enrolled in one of these three types of
schools is higher among those who live in the diaspora than among those who live in the village.
This can be explained by the difficulty of enrolling in secondary schools and institutions of
higher education due to their unavailability in the village or to their being far away from the
village. None of the unmarried women in Budrus is enrolled in a secondary school or in a
community college. There is only one [unmarried] woman [in Budrus] who is enrolled in a
university, compared with 25 women studying in community colleges and 7 women studying in
universities among the unmarried women who live in the diaspora.
As for the type of specialization of the unmarried members of the [surveyed] households,
who are enrolled in community colleges or universities (their number is 106), Table 17 indicates
that 45.2% of males specialized in engineering and 24.6% of them specialized in accounting and
business administration; whereas 21.2% of the unmarried females specialized in literature,
linguistics, or social and political sciences, and an equal percentage elected to specialize in
accounting or business administration.

Table 16: The Educational Level of the Unmarried Members of the Households, of Both
Genders, in the Village and in the Diaspora

Educational Level Budrus Diaspora Total

 

 Males Females Males Females
Number % Number % Number % Number % Number %
Pre-school age 97 38.3 122 51.5 180 27.7 172 32.5 571 43.2
Elementary school 123 48.6 114 48.1 288 44.4 246 46.5 771 46.2
Secondary school 29 11.5 0 0 112 17.3 79 14.9 220 13.2
Community college 2 0.8 0 0 32 4.9 25 4.7 59 3.6
University 2 0.8 1 0.4 37 5.7 7 1.4 47 2.8
Total 253 100 237 100 649 100 529 100 1668 100

Table 17: The Distribution of the [Community] College and University Unmarried Students, of
Both Genders, Who Are in Budrus or in the Diaspora, According to the Type of Specialization

Type of Specialization Males Females Total

Number % Number % Number %
Engineering 33 45.3 5 15.2 38 35.8
Literature, Linguistics, Social and Political Sciences 4 5.5 7 21.2 11 10.4
Accounting, Business Administration 18 24.6 7 21.2 25 23.6
Education, Religion 2 2.7 5 15.2 7 6.6
Science, Mathematics, Chemistry 0 0 0 0 0 0
Medicine, Nursing 2 2.7 0 0 2 1.9
Pharmacology, Medical Lab Technology 3 4.1 2 6.1 5 4.7
Computer Science 4 5.5 1 3 5 4.7
Economics, Finance 2 2.7 0 0 2 1.9
Other 4 5.5 2 6.1 6 5.7
Not mentioned 1 1.4 4 12 5 4.7
Total 73 100 33 100 106 100

8 The village’s need for offering adult literacy classes

The study indicated that the total of the illiterate people of both genders among those who
live presently in the village is 98 persons, of whom 41 are males and the remaining are females
(Table 18). More than half of those who are illiterate are of the age group “51 or older.”
When the villagers were asked about their need for having adult literacy classes, they
responded affirmatively. The number of those who enrolled in these classes when they were
offered was estimated to be 35 males and 45 females. Regarding this matter, we have mentioned
previously that part of the funds offered by UNESCO to the village, in the later part of 1991,
whose value was 20,500 US dollars, will be spent on literacy activities and adult education due
to the villagers’ desire for these matters.

Table 18: The Illiterate Residents of the Village According to Age Group and Gender

Age Group Males Females Total

Number % Number % Number %
Younger than 20 0 0 3 5 3 3
20 – 40 12 29 13 23 25 25
41 – 50 3 7 8 14 11 12
50 or older 26 64 33 58 59 60

 

Total 41 100 57 100 98 100

9 Requested educational improvements and changes in the village

(9.A) The need to expand the existing schools
When the people of the village and its local leaders were asked whether they needed to
enlarge the schools of the village, they answered affirmatively. They expressed a strong desire
for expanding the coed boys’ school so that it would contain 9 classrooms, and for constructing a
new coed girls’ school that would consist of 6 classrooms instead of the currently rented
schoolhouse.

(9.B) Improvements in the currently used curricula

The local leaders in the village conceded that the current school curricula do not help the
students after their graduation to face life’s challenges and demands and are not practically useful
to them. They attributed this to the fact that the curricula taught in the West Bank were created
about 23 years ago, and remained during all this time in their original state without any alteration
or modification; and hence they did not keep up with any development or progress. Moreover,
the pedagogical methods used rely on memorizing and spoon-feeding, which do not allow the
students to be creative or to think freely.
They offered the following suggestions to improve the curricula so that they would serve
the ambitions of the youth and assist them in their practical lives:

1 It is necessary to revamp the curricula completely by specialists, so that they would be

compatible with the needs of the society and the demands of progress in all its forms.

2 It is necessary that the new curricula contain a large portion of various scientific subjects,
and it is necessary that laboratory classes and classes devoted to scientific application be
increased.

3 It is necessary to stress physical education and art and music, and to provide teachers
trained in these specializations; for currently these subjects are almost totally neglected.

(9.C) The need to enlarge the role of the schools in social progress
Connecting education to progress and the necessity of having the schools contribute to
the development and improvement of the living conditions in the village were among the reforms
suggested by the local leaders, including the schools’ teachers. They stressed the importance of
establishing extra-curricular activities during the weekly program that are the equivalent of at
least two school periods per week, during which the teacher engages in building social
consciousness among the students, in explaining the importance of community service in all
forms of life, and in explaining the importance of maintaining the cleanliness of the village, so it
will always appear clean and beautiful. They suggested as well that the teacher should explain to
the students during these periods the necessity of maintaining and preserving the public facilities
and institutions of the village, such as the school, the kindergarten, the health clinic, the mosque,
the club, and others, in order to strengthen in them their pride in their village. Also [they

 

suggested] that the students should engage in carrying out limited developmental projects,
whether at the level of the family or the level of the local community, that help improve the
living conditions in the village, as well as engage in communal activities to help the villagers
meet specific needs, especially during the season of picking the olives and harvesting.

 

 Ninth: Housing and Homes

1 The number of bedrooms in a home

It is clear from Table 19 that 52.5% of all the homes that belong to the heads of
households in the village and in the diaspora consist of only two bedrooms. There are 31.5% of
these homes of which the number of bedrooms does not exceed a single room. The table shows
as well that the number of bedrooms in the homes of households that live in the diaspora is
greater than the number of bedrooms in the homes of the households that still live in the village.

Table 19: The Distribution of the Homes in the Village and in the Diaspora According to the
Number of Their Bedrooms

Number of Bedrooms Budrus Diaspora Total

Number % Number % Number %
1 bedroom 96 60 50 16.5 146 31.5
2 bedrooms 62 38.8 181 59.7 243 52.5
3 bedrooms 2 1.2 66 21.8 68 14.7
4 bedrooms 0 0 6 2 6 1.3
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

2 The number of people who live in a single home

Figure 21 shows that 64.4% of the homes of the [surveyed] households contain in
addition to the husband and wife only three individuals, whereas 11.7% of the homes of these
households contain 10 or more individuals.
If we compare those who live in the village to those who live in the diaspora, it becomes
clear from Table 20 that the number of the individuals who live in each of the homes of the
households that live in the diaspora is higher than the number of the individuals who live in each
of the homes of the households that live in the village. This explains the greater number of
bedrooms in the homes of the heads of household that reside outside the West Bank.

Table 20: The Distribution of the Households in the Village and in the Diaspora According to the
Number of Individuals Who Live in a Single Home

Number of Individuals Budrus Diaspora Total

[Excludes husband and wife] Number % Number % Number %
1–3 133 70.6 186 61.4 299 64.6
4–6 23 14.4 51 16.8 74 16
7–9 13 8.1 24 7.9 37 8
10 – 12 7 4.4 35 11.6 42 9.1
13 or more 4 2.5 7 2.3 11 2.4
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

 

Figure 21: The Distribution of Households According to the Numbers of Individuals Who Live
in the Home [Excluding Husband and Wife]

3 The number of families that live in a single home

The findings of the study showed that the greatest number (95.3%) of the families prefer
to live and reside in a home that is separate from the other married members of the family.
However, there are 4.7% of these families that still share the home in which it lives with another
family, such as the family of the father or the brother. The percentage of those that share their
home with another family is somewhat greater among the families that live in the diaspora than
among the families that live in Budrus (Table 21).

Table 21: The Distribution of the Households in the Village and in the Diaspora According to the
Number of Families That Live in a Single Home

Number of Families Budrus Diaspora Total

Number % Number % Number %
Only a single family 159 99.4 282 93.1 441 95.3
Two families 0 0 15 5 15 3.2
Not mentioned 1 0.6 6 1.9 7 1.5
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

4 The area of an occupied house

 

 The area of most of the homes that the families occupy (76.9%) is between 31 and 90
square meters [per home], whereas there are 13.4% of these homes whose area does not exceed
30 square meters, and only 9.7% of them whose area is 91 or more square meters. The study
showed that the percentage of the homes whose area is 91 or more square meters is higher
outside the village than inside it. The converse is true regarding the homes whose area is 30 or
fewer square meters (Table 22). When the families were asked whether they have intentions of
expanding their homes in the future, 70% responded negatively and 30% said that they have such
intentions.

Table 22: The Area, in Square Meters, of the Homes inside and outside Budrus

The Area in Square Meters Budrus Diaspora Total

Number % Number % Number %
30 or fewer 60 37.5 2 0.6 62 13.4
31 – 60 73 45.6 51 16.8 124 26.8
61 – 90 23 14.4 209 69 232 50.1
90 or more 4 2.5 41 13.6 45 9.7
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

5 The extent to which necessary utilities are available inside the home
In general electricity is available in all homes, whether in Budrus or in the diaspora,
except for 7 homes in the village, whose owners said that electricity is not available. As for
running water that is delivered through a water grid, it is available in all the homes of the
households. In the village of Budrus, the public water is not available three days every month,
during which the villagers rely on the water in their supplementary reservoirs or the water from
wells that are suitable for drinking.
Refrigerators are available in 87% of the homes, while they are not present in 13% of
them. Most of the homes that have no refrigerators are located in the village (Table 23).

Table 23: The Distribution of the Homes According to the Availability of Refrigerators

The extent to which refrigerators are available Budrus Diaspora Total

in the home Number % Number % Number %
Available 104 65 299 98.6 403 87
Not available 56 35 4 1.4 60 13
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100

 

Tenth: Audio and Visual Communication Devices and the Extent of Their Use
among the Population

1 The story of introducing the “gramophone” or record player into the village
The first gramophone machine in the village was introduced in 1934 by a villager whose
name was Muḥammad ʿAbdullāh ʿAllān. He bought it as a way to make a living, as he used to
play to people their favorite songs that were available on records in return for a half qirsh or one
chicken’s egg or other agricultural products. The introduction of this machine into the village
created a large commotion: the villagers when they heard about this machine gathered in his
home to hear this “magical” device that spoke, sang, and recited the Qurʾān without there being
any person present in it.
That gramophone was used in many occasions such as weddings, circumcision parties,
recovery from illness, and during the winter evenings when the villagers would gather in the
village’s court. Later after the first gramophone was introduced into the village by Muḥammad
ʿAbdullāh ʿAllān, Shaykh ʿAbdullāh Yaʿqūb bought another record player for the exclusive use
of his family.

2 The story of introducing the radio into the village

Until the year 1939, there was not a single radio in the village at all, and none of the
villagers knew anything about it except for the lucky few who traveled to the city and saw and
heard a radio in some cafés.
The occasion of introducing the radio into the village was a very important event. How
couldn’t it be? The people were able to hear songs, music, international news, and Qurʾānic
recitations coming from this wondrous wooden box that contained noting other than electrical
wires and gadgets, which the villagers saw with their own eyes when they looked inside the box
to examine it with great astonishment.
The radio was introduced into the village in 1940, that is, during World War II, by the
British Mandate Government, which supplied every village with a single radio to be placed in a
home near the center of the village, so the people can listen to it and hear the news about the
victorious battles of the Allied Forces during the war. The Mandate Government placed the
device in the room of the late Muḥammad Dāwūd Salāmah, who was known by the name “Abū
Dāwūd,” which was near the village’s court—the natural place for the gathering of the villagers.
All the women, men, and children were extremely keen to listen to it every night.

3 The story of introducing the television into the village

The first television was introduced into the village in the year 1974, when a villager,
whose name is “Ḥusayn Muḥammad ʿIlayyān,” bought it. Shortly after that, Yaʿqūb ʿAbdullāh
Yaʿqūb bought the second television. As with the commotions caused by the introduction of the
gramophone and the radio, the introduction of the television caused an even greater commotion,
when the villagers saw with their own eyes the singer, announcer, and the shaykh reciting the
Qurʾān, in addition to the beautiful natural sceneries, animals, cities, and countries. “It is true that

 

this must be the end of time,” said the villagers and their elders when they saw this wondrous
device enter their village.

4 The extent to which households own radios, televisions, and video players in the present
time
It is clear from Figure 22 that 98% of the households in Budrus and in the diaspora own
presently one or more radios. This means that only 2% of the households do not own such a
device. As for television, it is available in 80% of the households, while a video player is
available in only 16% of the households.

Figure 22: The Extent to Which Households Own Radios, Televisions, and Video Players

If we compare the households that own televisions and video players in the village to
those in the diaspora, we find that the percentage of those households that own both machines in
the village is less than the percentage of those that are in the diaspora. (Table 24)

Table 24: The Distribution of the Households According to Their Ownership of Televisions and
Video Players in the Village and in the Diaspora

The Extent of Television Video Player

Ownership Budrus Diaspora Total Budrus Diaspora Total
Number % Number % Number % Number % Number % Number %
Own 75 46.9 295 97.4 370 79.9 5 3.1 69 22.8 74 16
Do not own 85 53.1 8 2.6 93 20.1 155 96.9 234 77.2 389 84
Total 160 100 303 100 463 100 160 100 303 100 463 100

 

  

 Eleventh: Services and Facilities That Are Available in the Village

1 Methods of transportation that are available in the village, and their development
The villagers’ use and ownership of modern automobiles have progressed greatly, similar
to the progress of their use of radios and televisions. Prior to 1948, there were no vehicles in the
village for transporting passengers except for a single bus, which departed from the village in the
morning, travelling to the city of al-Lydd, and returning to it at 2 in the afternoon. There was no
need prior to 1948 for visiting any Palestinian cities other than the city of al-Lydd, which is 9
kilometers away from the village. After 1948 and until 1967, Ramallah Bus Company ran a
single bus on a Budrus/Ramallah route, which connected the village and another 6 villages to the
city of Ramallah, which is 45 kilometers away from the village. Naturally the bus that ran on the
Budrus/al-Lydd route ceased to operate after 1948, since the city of al-Lydd and other Palestinian
regions fell under the Israeli occupation after that date. After 1967 the bus that ran on the
Budrus/Ramallah route continued to transport villagers only to the city of Ramallah, whereas the
bus that ran on the old Budrus/al-Lydd route did not resume its transporting villagers to that city,
which is closer to them, despite the fact that the borders between Israel and the occupied West
Bank were opened in 1967. Instead of [resuming the old bus route], some of the villagers started
to operate privately owned vehicles to transport others from the village to the city of al-Lydd, to
other employment locations, and to some Israeli cities in the occupied territories. After 1968,
some villagers bought 8 vehicles for this purpose, especially after the Israeli labor market was
opened to the residents of Budrus and other neighboring villages.
The first one of those 8 vehicles was bought in 1971 by a villager whose name was
Ḥusayn Muḥammad ʿIlayyān. After that, in the same year, two more vehicles were bought by
Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿAwaḍ and ʿAbdulraḥmān Aḥmad ʿIlayyān. Many people followed them, so
that the number of privately owned vehicles in the village reached in 1991 16 automobiles (Table
25), which were owned by 16 heads of households among the 160 heads of households who were
living in the village at the end of 1991.
Regarding the heads of households who live in Jordan and other countries (total = 303),
the study showed that 47% of them, that is, 143 heads of households, have private automobiles.

Table 25: Make and Number of Vehicles That Are Privately Owned in the Village at the End of
1991

Make Number Type of Use

Peugeot (7 passengers) 5 Transporting laborers
Ford (7 passengers) 3 Transporting laborers
Mercedes (7 passengers) 2 Taxi / transporting laborers
Fiat (5 passengers) 2 Transporting laborers
Peugeot Thunder 2 Commercial
Subaru (5 passengers) 1 Transporting laborers
Ford (5 passengers) 1 Taxi / transporting laborers
Total 16

 

2 The Sport Club
The Budrus Sport Club was established in 1972; the number of its members reached in
1991 90 members. The Club performs cultural, athletic, and social activities, and offers the
village limited services within its modest financial means. At the top of these services are the
following:
–– Emphasizing health education, which is offered through a specialized center that belongs
to the Club.
–– Focusing on carrying out some public projects in the village, such as establishing a health
clinic, maintaining the buildings of the boys’ and girls’ schools, and paving and cleaning roads.
The Club, however, currently faces various major problems that hinder its mission and
activities; the most important of these problems is the poor financial state of the Club, the large
deficit in its budget, and the lack of a permanent headquarters that houses all its facilities, such as
the kindergarten, the library, and sport courts.
The local leaders and the administrators of the Club offered specific suggestions to
enhance the Club’s contribution to the progress in the village and to the improvement of the
living conditions. The most important of these suggestions are: (1) the need to strengthen the
cooperation between the villagers and the Club, (2) the need for the villagers’ encouragement
and support of the activities performed by the Club, and (3) the need for obtaining financial and
moral support from the specialized social organizations, so that the Club would be able to
establish a permanent headquarters that houses arenas, study halls, sport courts, and other things,
and be able to serve the village better and improve its living conditions.

3 Health services
In the past, health services were not available in the village; because of this the villagers
suffered greatly, since a sick person who needed [medical attention] had to visit the public clinic
located in the neighboring village of Qibyā, which was staffed by a single male nurse and was
visited once a week by a physician for only 3 hours. During this short period, he would have to
treat more than 60 patients, who would gather from the neighboring villages of Budrus, Shiqbā,
and Shibtīn, in addition to the village of Qibyā.
After the year 1967, Catholic Charities took charge of the Qibyā clinic and the physician
began to visit it twice weekly. In between these visits the clinic remained closed. The clinic in the
village of Qibyā continues till the present at this state, offering these limited services to the
villagers. Among the most important of these services are the following:
–– Examining the sick and treating those with minor illnesses.
–– Transferring those who need extensive treatment to the hospital in the city of Ramallah or
to specialized physicians.
–– Examining pregnant women and caring for the infants and providing them with baby
formula.
The people of Budrus recently felt the need for establishing a health clinic in their village
(Figure 23). The clinic was opened in 1988 with the help and oversight of the Friends of the Sick

 

Association in the city of Ramallah. Good health services have become relatively available in the
village, since the clinic contains equipment for analyzing blood and measuring blood sugar and
pressure, in addition to equipment to examine the heart and pregnant women to ensure the health
of the fetus. The services are provided by a primary-care physician and a nurse, who visit the
clinic twice a week—Tuesday and Saturday—for 3–4 hours, during which they see about 20
patients in a single visit. Among the common illnesses in the village are various infections of the
chest and throat and influenza, especially among children, inflammation of the joints among the
elderly, chickenpox, German measles, skin diseases, and intestinal worms among the old and the
young. Also, the physician routinely examines all the pregnant women and observes the growth
of the children without fees, and offers treatment, health maintenance, and medicines for
significantly reduced prices.
In spite of these services offered by the clinic, the villagers expressed their desire to have
the clinic open daily instead of twice a week, as is the state now, and to hire a permanent nurse
and a physician who reside in the village. They also stated their need for having a medical center
that contains a laboratory and an X-ray department. They requested as well that medical
examination and treatment be free of charge.

Figure 23: Two Views inside the Health Clinic

1. The physician and the nurse examining a sick child.
2. A view of some of the medications that are available in the clinic.

4 Other services and facilities that are available in the village

In addition to the health services that the clinic offers, there are other services and
facilities that were not available prior to 1967. In general, all services and facilities that are not
related to worship and education, such as the mosque and schools, were not available before
1967.
In the village presently 6 general stores, 2 stores for each of electrical and medical
supplies and for selling clothes, and a relatively new mosque (Figure 24), as well as a blacksmith
shop (Figure 25), a carpenter shop, and a press for extracting olive oil, which is in need of
modernization in order to serve the farmers of Budrus and of the neighboring villages more
efficiently (Figure 26). In spite of the fact that there is no auto mechanic shop in the village, there
are 6 mechanics, who can perform repair tasks if a need arises. Also, there is in the village a
mechanical thresher, towed by a tractor, which is used in harvesting instead of using animals.

Figure 24: A View of the Village’s New Mosque

Figure 25: A View of the Blacksmith Shop in the Village

Figure 26: A View of the Modern Oil Press

 

 Twelfth: Agriculture and Possibilities for Agricultural Developments

The area of the farmed and unfarmed lands of the village was estimated prior to 1948 to
be about 25,000 dunams [6177 acres]. Between 1948 and 1967, the area of the farmed land was
estimated to be about 4,000 dunams [988 acres] only. After 1967 and till the present, the area of
the farmed land increased to about 5,000 dunams [1235 acres]. Among the most important crops
that are farmed in the village are wheat and rye.
As for the fruit-bearing trees, the most important one is olive; the number of olive trees in
the village is estimated to be 3,500 trees, and their collective production of olive oil is about
31 32
1,200 tin cans. The second most important tree is cactus; the villagers’ income from cactus
pears sometimes exceeds their income from olive farming (Figure 27). These are followed by fig
farming [as a source of income].
Agriculture by irrigation, in the wide sense, is nonexistent in the village due to the lack of
water for irrigation. However, the villagers take advantage of the public water grid and wells that
collect rainwater, which are about 50 wells in the village, to irrigate the plants and trees around
their homes. The villagers make excellent use of these limited pieces of land to plant, utilizing
public water irrigation, many fruit-bearing trees, such as all types of citrus trees (especially
lemon), quince, pear, and apple trees, as well as grapevines. Some farmers use the public water
grid to irrigate some of the fruit-bearing trees, such as olive, by the drip method.
In addition to utilizing the public water grid to irrigate some fruit-bearing trees, public
water is also used to irrigate many vegetables planted in home gardens for local
consumption—vegetables such as mallow, spinach, squash, green pepper, eggplant, mint,
33
maramiyyah, and others.

Figure 27: Two Views of the Main Paved Road of the Village (al-Ḥāwūz Street) Lined with Cacti
1. Towards the direction of Qibyā to the east.
2. Toward the west

We previously pointed out that due to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, many
families who own land in the village were not able to return to the village and farm their
agricultural lands. Thus most of these lands were exploited by families who do not own any
agricultural land, who continued to live in the village, and who had the ability, readiness, and
manpower to farm these lands (Figure 28). This matter became clear when the heads of
households who still live in the village were asked whether they own agricultural land; 60% of
them (that is, 96 heads of households) answered negatively despite the fact that most of them
continued to farm. The number of landowners among the families that still live in the village was
31
The weight of an olive-oil-filled tin can is 15 kilograms.
32
The fruit of the cactus tree is known by many names: in Arabic, it is called tīn shawkī (literally,
thorny fig); in English, it has many names, the most popular of which is, perhaps, cactus pear.
(Translator’s note)
33
Or miramiyyah, an east Mediterranean sage, which has no common English name. It is used to
make herbal tea that is believed to have medicinal effects, especially for the digestive system.
(Translator’s note)
 

merely 40% (that is, only 64 heads of households). About one half of those [landowners] utilize
only one-half to two-thirds of the agricultural land they own, whereas the other half utilize more
than two-thirds of their land.

Figure 28: A View of a Farmer Plowing His Land Using a Traditional Method; Behind Him Are
Olive Trees

There are virtually no agricultural services and guidance offered to the villagers. There is
an office for agricultural information in Ramallah, which is about 45 kilometers away from the
village. The agricultural director does not visit the village except once every 3 months, in order
to supply the farmers with information concerning the planting of new olive saplings and shoots
of other fruit-bearing trees, and the methods of fertilizing them and caring for them.
Regarding raising farm animals, the findings showed that 18.8% of the households that
reside in the village raise high-quality goats, which give birth twice a year (Figure 29). Next in
importance comes raising meat-producing and egg-producing chickens, which is practiced by
11.9% of the households (Figure 30). It is worth noting that raising chicks and chickens is
presently common in the village at a commercial scale. Three households only practice raising
cattle and Holstein cows; five households practice raising rabbits; and only two households
practice beekeeping (Figure 31). When the households, who live in the village, were asked
whether they desire to raise animals and keep bees, 41.9% of them expressed a desire to raise
high-quality goats and requested financial support for this purpose; 33.8% of them stated that
they need assistance in order to raise meat-producing and egg-producing chickens; 14.4% of
them expressed a desire to raise cattle and high-quality cows; and only about 6% of them
requested assistance in order to raise rabbits and to practice beekeeping (Figure 32).

Figure 29: Two Views of Raising High-Quality Goats

1. Goats feeding inside a barn
2. Goats grazing

Figure 30: Two Views of Raising Chickens in the Village

1. A farm for meat-producing chickens
2. A farm for egg-producing chickens

Figure 31: A View of One of the Village’s Ladies Who Is Practicing Beekeeping

 

 Figure 32: The Distribution of Households in the Village According to Their Practicing or
Desiring to Practice Raising Animals and Beekeeping

 

 Thirteenth: The Problems Facing the Village and Its Needs

The village presently faces several problems; the villagers agreed that the most important
of these problems is the lack of transportation that connects the village to the city of Ramallah
permanently. We have previously mentioned that there is a single bus that travels once a day on
the Budrus/Ramallah route, as it leaves the village every morning and returns to it in the
afternoon. This, of course, is inadequate according to the opinion of the villagers; and they
considered this among the problems that they presently face.
The second problem is the lack of phone lines in the village, which increases the isolation
of the villagers and prevents them from accomplishing many tasks and transactions in an age that
is characterized by fast movement. The lack of having a permanent physician and nurse in the
village is considered among the serious problems that the villagers described, and which must be
solved by the appropriate health organizations.
The villagers in the past carried out some projects, which they considered essential,
through cooperation with certain charitable organizations and institutions. One of those projects
was the local water grid in 1978. The project was funded by the villagers through donations and
through cooperation with Catholic Charities, which also contributed to the funds. Another project
was building the health clinic in the village in 1988. Donations from the villagers covered some
of the cost, in addition to the financial contribution of the philanthropist Ḥamīdah al-Barghūthī.
The third important project carried out by the villagers in 1986 through cooperation with
Jerusalem Electrical Company was connecting the village to an electrical grid, which supplied
electricity to all the homes in the village.
When the villagers and the local leaders in the village were asked to list the projects that
they desire to accomplish according to their importance, they answered that they need to build a
new boys’ school that consists of 9 classrooms, since the current schoolhouse contains only two
old classrooms that are not up to code. Furthermore, because these two rooms are not sufficient
to house all the students, the villagers are forced to rent additional rooms in residential buildings
that are unsuitable at all for this purpose.
The second project that they wish to accomplish is to build a new girls’ school that
consists of at least 6 classrooms, since the current girls’ school in the village is still a rented
building, which is also completely unsuitable for teaching. The third project concerns the
cleanliness of the village and expanding and paving its roads, especially the main unpaved road.
All the roads in the village are narrow, unpaved, and full of potholes; and hence they need
maintenance.
The villagers and the local leaders requested that the official agencies and the relevant
organizations offer the necessary support to their village in order to accomplish these three vital
projects, mentioned above. The villagers expressed their willingness to contribute funds that
would cover at least 25% of the cost of the construction of new boys’ and girls’ schools, and to
supply free labor to expand and pave their roads.
The villagers also requested that a dairy factory be built in their village, since there is an
increased emphasis in the village on raising high-quality dairy cows, and since such a factory
would be essential for marketing their dairy products not only in their village but also in the
neighboring villages, and for generating employment in the village. The villagers expressed their
willingness to supply free labor for constructing such a factory.
 

  

 Fourteenth: Summary of the Study, Recommendations, and Requests

We will focus in this final part of the study on emphasizing some of the facts that relate to
issues important to the village of Budrus and to the people who live in it. We will restrict the
recommendations and requests to those that are [essential for] improving the living conditions of
the people in the village, given the difficult situation in which they live due to the Israeli
occupation, and to those projects that can be accomplished with the participation of the villagers
themselves.

(A) Summary of the Study

1 A brief overview of the village

Budrus is located about 9 kilometers to the east of the city of al-Lydd, about 45
kilometers to the west of the city of Ramallah, and about 56 kilometers to the northwest of the
city of Jerusalem. Before the Israeli occupation of 1948, it belonged to the al-Ramla District,
Jaffa Province, and after that it belonged to Ramallah Province.
The village occupies an area estimated to be 2 square kilometers. Before the Israeli
occupation of 1948, the area of the farmed and unfarmed lands that belonged to the village
reached about 25,000 dunams [6177 acres]. However, this area now is about 8,000 dunams [1976
acres], since the village lost most of its land due to the Israeli occupation. Budrus was located on
what were the frontlines after that war. Because of this, it was considered one of the villages of
34
the boundary line, as Rhodes Boarder passed through its land. It is principally an agricultural
village, and it contains a significant number of historical and religious sights and landmarks.

2 Population
The population that belongs to Budrus, whether those who live in it or in the diaspora,
reached during the latter part of 1991 2,550 persons. The study disclosed the following attributes
of the village’s population:
–– The number of those who reside in the village is 796 individuals; 51% of them are males,
and 49% are females.
–– The number of those who live in the diaspora is 1,754 individuals; 53.3% are males and
46.7% are females.
–– Due to the conditions of the Israeli occupation of 1967, it is not possible for those who
live in the diaspora to return and reside in the village or to visit their relatives except when they
are awarded a “family reunion” permit, which is quite difficult to obtain.

34
Rhodes Border, also known as the “Green Zone,” was the border that separated Israeli from its
neighboring Arab countries after 1948. It was established by the 1949 Armistice Agreements
between Israel and each of Jordan, Eygpt, Syria, and Lebanon. (Translator’s note)

 

–– 55.4% of those who reside in the village are of the age group 20 years or younger,
whereas 10.7% are of the age group 61 years or older. Hence 66.1% of those who reside in the
village require special care, since they are nonproductive groups.
–– The entire population consists of 463 households; among them 160 households still live
in the village and 303 households live in the diaspora.
–– 27.5% of the heads of households who reside in the village are older than 60 years.
–– The percentage of the households that reside in Budrus and that has no children who live
in the diaspora is 73.7%.
–– Half the households that live in Budrus have 4 or more members per household, and
29.3% of them have 6 or more members per household.
–– The number of the senior citizens of the village whose ages exceeds 80 years is 26; 16 of
them are males and 6 females. 6 of those live alone, while the remaining 20 live with their
children.
–– The number of the widows in the village is 21; 8 of them live alone and the rest live with
their children.

3 The jobs and professions that are performed by the heads of households and the residents
who live in the village
–– 16.3% of the heads of households that reside in Budrus do not work.
–– 73.1% of them are self-employed or have private business, especially in the field of
agriculture.
–– 6.3% of them work as teachers.
–– 3.8% of them are employed in the public or private sectors.
–– Almost all the wives work as homemakers. However, a certain portion of them, just as the
case with the husbands, work in the field of agriculture with Israel.
–– There are no females in the village who are employed in the public or private sectors,
except for in the field of agriculture.
–– The main profession in the village is farming. However, there are other professions. They
are, in order of their popularity: construction, education, auto repair, electrical work, carpentry,
blacksmithing, and medical supplies.

4 Education
The village faced huge problems in education due to the conditions of the occupation.
The study points to the following:
–– The villagers built in 1955 a school that consists of two classrooms, each of which is 30
square meters. The school is constructed on a land whose size is 8 dunams [1.97 acres]. It
contains a soccer field and a volleyball court, which are in need of maintenance. The school is a

 

coed elementary school comprising second to sixth grades. The total number of students in this
school reached in 1989/90 123 students, 73 of them males and 50 females.
–– There are no middle or high schools in the village. All male and female students receive
their secondary education in three neighboring villages. There are 66 such students in 1989/90.
–– There is in the village a coed school that consists of one grade only, which is the first
grade. The number of its students reached 20 students in 1989/90; of them 12 are males and 8 are
females. The schoolhouse is rented, and the school has a single female teacher.
–– The number of students in the village who are enrolled in institutions of higher learning
in 1989/90 is only 3 (2 males and 1 female.)
–– In general, the educational situation in the village is bad. The females are less fortunate
than males when it comes to education. Additionally, education is not connected to employment
and it does not contribute at all to the development of the local society.
–– In 1975 a kindergarten was established in the village, which is affiliated administratively
with the Sport Club. It has a single female teacher and a food supervisor. 40 children were
enrolled in the kindergarten in 1989/90. The kindergarten fulfills all its students’ needs of
notebooks and pens, educational toys, and physical education, as well as a physical exam and a
daily hot meal. The kindergarten suffers from several problems, as it has no permanent building
and it receives little financial support.
–– UNESCO gave the village in the later part of 1991 financial assistance in the form of
20,500 US dollars to help, with the cooperation of the villagers, construct a permanent building
for the kindergarten and support adult education and literacy, especially among women.
–– Regarding the married people who live in Budrus and in the diaspora, more than half of
them, whether males or females, completed less than high school education, 10% of them hold
high school diplomas, 11% of the husbands and 4% the wives hold degrees from community
colleges, and 10% of the husbands and 2% of the wives are university graduates.
–– The number of the illiterate individuals, of both genders, who live in Budrus reached 98;
41 are males and 57 are females. 60% of those are of the age group 51 years or older. There is a
noticeable increase in the percentage of illiterates, of both genders, among the age groups 20–40
and 41–50, as it reached 25% and 12%, respectively. In general, illiteracy is much higher among
the wives than among the husbands.

5 Housing
The study points to the following facts regarding housing.
–– 60% of the families that live in Budrus occupy a house that contains a single bedroom,
38.7% 2 bedrooms, and 1.2% 3 bedrooms.
–– 15% of the total families that live in Budrus, and which consist of 7 or more members,
live in a single home.

 

–– The area of 37.5% of the homes in the village does not exceed 30 square meters. 30% of
the homeowners in the village expressed a desire to expand their homes. There are 7 homes in
the village that have no electricity.
–– All homes receive running water through the public water grid. However, water is
unavailable periodically, which forces the villagers to rely on private water reservoirs.
–– 35% of the homes in the village contain no refrigerators.

6 Communications and transportation

–– The villagers suffer from the problem of not having frequent transportation to the city of
Ramallah, especially by means of large vehicles (buses), in spite of the fact that the number of
the privately-owned vehicles in the village of different makes and sizes reached 16 vehicles,
nearly all of which are used to transport laborers to Israel.
–– There are no phone lines in the village.
–– 47% of the villagers own televisions, and 3.1% of them own video players.

7 Health services
The study showed that the villagers suffer from a shortage of health services, whether this
shortage is related to the number of needed professionals or to the availability of the means of
treatment and prevention.

8 Agriculture
The study showed the following facts and statistics regarding the state of agriculture in
the village.
–– About 5,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square meters) of land are used for farming,
especially for farming wheat and rye.
–– The number of olive trees reached 3,500 trees, which collectively produce about 1,200 tin
cans of olive oil (tin can = 15 kilograms).
–– Lately, especially after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the importance of
farming cactus pears became apparent. It is followed in importance by the farming of figs.
–– There is minor farming of home gardens—especially growing vegetables.
–– There is no irrigation agriculture on a large scale due to the unavailability of irrigation
water. An exception is the use of the public water grid to irrigate home gardens and some
fruit-bearing trees and vegetables.
–– Drip irrigation has begun to be used in the village on a very restricted scale.
–– As for raising animals:
● 18.8% of the families that reside in the village raise high-quality goats.
● 11.9% of the families in the village raise meat-producing and egg-producing
chickens.
 

 ● There are 3 families that raise cattle and cows.
–– 42% of the families that reside in Budrus expressed their desire to raise high-quality goats
and requested financial support for this purpose, whereas 34% of the families requested support
in order to raise meat-producing and egg-producing chickens, and about 15% of the families
wished to raise high-quality cattle and cows.
–– Agricultural and veterinary services and guidance are all but nonexistent in the village.

9 The Sport Club in the village

The Sport Club of Budrus was established in 1972, and the number of its members
reached in 1991 90 members. The Club practices educational, athletic, and social activities. It
also offers to the villagers limited services due to the poverty of resources and the restriction of
its reaches. The Club suffers from severe problems, the most important of which are:
–– The deterioration of its financial situation and the severity of its deficit.
–– Not having permanent headquarters.
The Club can play a major role in development in the village if adequate support is made
available to it.

10 The priorities of developmental projects according to the villagers

The study showed that the villagers requested that the following developmental projects
be accomplished, which are listed according to their priorities.
–– Building a new boys’ school, improving the quality of education in general, and relating
the education to employment needs and to the requirements for growth in the village.
–– Improving the girls’ school and the kindergarten.
–– Keeping the village clean, and expanding, paving, and beautifying its roads, and
furnishing them with streetlights, especially the main road.
–– Building a dairy factory.
–– Providing a bus for transportation.
–– Providing phone lines.

(B) Recommendations

In order to solve the most important problems that the village faces, and which the study
disclosed, and to answer the developmental priorities mentioned above, we present the following
recommendations, listed according to importance.

1 Provide buildings for schools with all needed facilities according to the applicable
educational, technical, and health requirements, so that all the sons and daughters of the village

 

are provided with the opportunity to receive their education at all its levels (kindergarten,
elementary, middle, and high school) in the village.

2 Support the teaching of scientific research, vocational education, home economics, and
physical education in the schools.

3 Enable the schools to enact programs and perform activities to serve the society in the
village, such as offering adult literacy classes, and organizing conferences and workshops on
various developmental topics, which the village needs—that is, agricultural, industrial, health,
environmental, social, and cultural topics.

4 Develop the educational and administrative cadre for the village’s schools; also develop
and improve the local leadership through constant training.

5 Accomplish projects that concern the cleanliness of the village and the expanding,
paving, and beautifying of its roads through the cooperation of the Club, school students, and the
villagers.

6 Encourage projects that generate income to support the unemployed heads of households
and the elderly among men and women, especially the widows.

7 Support the cooperative movement in the village through the establishment of a

cooperative association, constructing a headquarters for it, and supplying it with all necessary
agricultural equipment in order to enable the villagers to solve their agricultural and marketing
problems.

8 Provide healthcare and health services to the children of pre-schooling ages, which are
called “the critical years,” since the future of the child depends on them, and to the older children
of both genders, through improving the state of the health clinic and the establishment of a health
center in the village.

9 Support the Sport Club of the village to enable it to accomplish its goals and to provide
meaningful services to the villagers.

10 Modernize the oil press that already exists in the village, so that it may serve not only the
people of Budrus but also the residents of neighboring villages.

Requests

To fulfill the previous recommendations, a sum of 449,900 Jordanian dinars must be

made available to the village, based on 1992 estimations of completing the following main
developmental projects and their components.

 

Project Cost in
Jordanian
Dinar
1. Expand and improve the current boys’ school, so it may house all the sons
and daughters of the village from the fourth elementary grade to the third
middle grade [4th – 9th grades] (being either coed or divided into two separate
periods). This project consists of the following components.
1.1. Build 9 classrooms, the area of each of which is 28 square meters, according
to the applicable technical, educational, and health requirements, and supply them
with desks and the necessary equipment 35,000
1.2. Build a scientific laboratory, whose area is 30 square meters, and supply it
with the necessary materials, instruments, and equipment. 7,500
1.3. Build a workshop for vocational education, whose area is 40 square meters,
and supply it with the necessary materials, instruments, and equipment. 9,000
1.4. Build administrative quarters and supply them with furniture. They should
consist of the following.
1.4.1 Principal’s office; 24 square meters.
1.4.2. Conference room; 48 square meters.
1.4.3. Teachers’ lounge; 48 square meters.
1.4.4. Storage room; 48 square meters.
1.4.5. Staff kitchen; 20 square meters.
1.4.6. Restroom. 26,000
1.5. Improve and modernize the current athletic facilities, which are a soccer field
and a volleyball court, and build a handball court. 4,000
1.6. Build a fence around the school grounds with a main gate. 3,000
1.7. Pave the outside court of the school. 2,000
1.8. Build restrooms for the students. 5,000
1.9. Supply the school with running water, sewers, electricity, and phone lines 10,000
2. Establish a young-children school (with only female teachers) that can
accommodate all the sons and daughters of the village from the first to the
35
third elementary grades as well as all the preschoolers in the village. This
project consists of the following components.
2.1. Build 4 classrooms, the area of each of which is 30 square meters, according
to the applicable technical, educational, and health requirements, and supply them
with desks and the necessary equipment. 15,500
2.2. Build administrative quarters and supply them with furniture. They should
consist of the following.
2.2.1. Principal’s office; 24 square meters.
2.2.2. Teachers’ lounge; 28 square meters.
2.2.3. Storage room; 28 square meters.
2.2.4. Restroom. 12,000

35
According to this study, preschoolers include kindergarteners. (Translator’s note)
 

2.3. Supply the kindergarten, which the villagers with the assistance of UNESCO
will build, with furniture and the necessary equipment and appropriate toys. 2,000
2.4. Build a fence around the school grounds with a main gate. 3,000
2.5. Pave the outside court of the school. 2,000
2.6. Construct restrooms for the children. 3,500
2.7. Supply the school with running water, sewers, electricity, and phone lines. 8,000
3. Enhance the role of the schools for the development of the local society by
adopting appropriate developmental projects and activities. 10,000
4. Offer constant training, during employment, to the schools’ cadre and
local leaders, so they may enhance their abilities and serve more effectively as
educational and developmental leaders in the schools and the village. 4,000
5. Pave the main road and other important back roads in the village 40,000
6. Supply the roads with streetlights. 7,000
7. Plant suitable trees on the sides of the roads. 1,500
8. Construct a park in the center of the village and supply it with cement
seats.
5,500
9. Remove the cacti from the residential quarters of the village, and remove
the abandoned and collapsed houses. 2,000
10. Establish a headquarters for a cooperative association, which consists of
two rooms, the area of each of which is 24 square meters, and a restroom.
This building could be part of the permanent headquarters of the village’s
Club, whose construction is suggested here. When the cooperative association
is established, it should be supplied with the following.
10.1. Used agricultural tractor. 8,000
10.2. Plow and earthmover attachments. 700
10.3. Water tank to be towed by the tractor, whose volume is 3,000 liters, for use
in irrigating fruit-bearing trees in the village [as a secondary source of water]. 400
10.4. Small trailer to transport agricultural materials, such as fertilizers. 300
10.5. Milk truck to transport and market the milk produced in the village to the
neighboring cities instead of building a dairy factory, since there is no economic
utility for the latter. 5,000
10.6. The association should encourage the villagers to farm jojoba trees and
produce jojoba oil in order to improve the income of the farmers; [the farmers
should be supported with] an average of 30 Jordanian dinars annually per farmer
per dunam for four years (until the trees bear fruits). 6,000
10.7. The association should encourage the villagers to raise cows, sheep, and
high-quality goats to produce meat and milk. 20,000
11. Provide the following employments in the village for 5 years: a
primary-care physician and a nurse. 25,000
12. Supply the health clinic with the necessary medical materials. 7,000
13. Build a medical center that comprises a medical laboratory and an X-ray
department, and provide the necessary technical cadre for it. 50,000

 

14. Establish a permanent headquarters for the village’s Sport Club that is
close to the boys’ school (so it may benefit from its facilities), and which
contains the following.
14.1. Furnished conference room; 48 square meters. 7,000
14.2. Activity hall (120 square meters) that is supplied with the following.
14.2.1. Theatre with electrical curtains, microphones, speakers, stand, and two
wooden side rooms.
14.2.2. Seats, tables, and stools.
14.2.3. Fully equipped small buffet.
14.2.4. Radio.
14.2.5. Television with its accessories such as a video camera.
14.2.6. Video player/recorder and videotapes.
14.2.7. Games for all ages. 23,000
14.3. Study hall and library (48 square meters), furnished and supplied with
books, magazines, and newspapers that serve all educational levels. 9,000
14.4. Gallery (32 square meters) supplied with some necessary equipment. 4,500
14.5. Storage room (24 square meters). 2,500
14.6. Small prayer hall (28 square meters). 3,500
14.7. Indoor sport court (48 square meters), with some necessary supplies.
7,500
14.8. Outdoor sport facilities (the sport facilities of the school may be used if the
Club is built near the boys’ school). 4,000
14.9. Running water, electricity, phone lines, and sewers. 8,000
14.10. Restrooms. 4,000
15. Modernize the oil press in the village by replacing the present equipment
with more modern equipment. 30,000
Total cost in Jordanian dinar 449,900

Appendix 1
Survey Form for Heads of Households

Appendix 2
[Interview] Form for the Village [Leaders]

Table of Contents and Indices

[English Translation of the Study Summary]