This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Balata village (Arabic: بلاطة البلد, romanized: Balāṭa al-Balad) is a Palestinian suburb of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, located 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) east of the city center.

[3][4] Its pseudonym, al-Balad (meaning "the village"), is used to distinguish it from the Palestinian refugee camp of Balata which lies to the east and was established in 1950.

[6][7] In the Samaritan chronicles, its Arabic names are transcribed as Balata ("a pavement of flat stone slabs") and Shejr al-Kheir ("tree of grace").

[9] One theory holds that balata is a derivation of the Aramaic word Balut, meaning "acorn" (or, in Arabic, "oak"), while another theory holds that it is a derivation of the Byzantine-Roman era, from the Greek word platanos, meaning "terebinth", which grew around the village spring.

Benjamin of Tudela, (d. 1173), who visited the site in the 12th century, places it "A sabbath-way distance from Sichem," and says it contains Joseph's sepulcher.

The Jews say that it was here that Nimrud (Nimrod) ibn Ka´an threw Abraham into the fire; the learned, however, say this took place at Babil (Babylon), in Irak -and Allah alone knows the truth.

[17] The church built around Jacob's Well and the lands of the village of Balata belonged to the Benedictine nuns of Bethany in the 12th century.

They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 5,200 akçe.

[23] A 1900 report by Conrad Schick for the Palestine Exploration Fund describes Balata as a hamlet made up of a few huts surrounded by gardens that lay to the west of Jacob's Well and its accompanying church complex, at that time in ruins.

While electricity and running water supplies were often irregular, the camp was better off in terms of public services than the village of Balata, which lacked piped water, and depended upon private electricity generators and Israeli-run education and medical services, until some after the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.