Fasayil

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Fasayil or Fasa'il (Arabic: فصايل), ancient Phasaelis, is a Palestinian village in the northeastern West Bank, a part of the Jericho Governorate, located 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) northwest of Jericho and about 40 kilometres (25 mi) southeast of Nablus.

[1] During the Roman period, Herod the Great, client king of Judaea, established a new city in the Jordan Valley north of Jericho, which he named Phasaelis (Ancient Greek: Φασαηλίς, Phasaēlís[2]), in dedication to his elder brother Phasael.

[4][5][6] Jewish historian and commander in the First Jewish-Roman War, Flavius Josephus, writes about the establishment of Phasaelis south of Archelais and describes it as part of a toparchy ruled by Herod's sister, Salome I.

Among the ruins on the site is a large square building, of which in modern times only the outline was visible, because it was almost completely buried.

The latter was established in 1998 by Bedouins who had been evicted by the Israeli authorities from their original lands in the Tel Arad region of the Negev Desert in the 1940s and 1950s.

[14] Fasayil gained international attention when in 2007 the Israel Defense Forces planned on demolishing the village's primary school.

[20] According to a census taken by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Fasayil had a population of 648 in 1997, of which 31% were refugees fleeing other parts of the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War.