The village is in the Wadi Ara area of the northern Triangle, 4 kilometers northeast of Umm al-Fahm.

The village is divided into five neighborhoods: Abu Bakr, Darwish, Subaihat, Ayash and Rifai.

[5] Pottery remains from the Iron Age I, IA II,[6] Persian[6][7] and the Hellenistic era have been found,[6] and a rock-hewn installation has been excavated from the latter period.

[11] French traveler Victor Guérin visited in 1870 and noted that "There are now not more than 150 residents, and it sits on a hill from which the view encompasses a considerable part of the Jezreel Valley.

[24] In November 1954, a Jordanian force entered the village and attacked a squad of Magav policemen, wounding one.

Later the kibbutz provided water and transportation services to Salem and social contact was built up between both communities as the residents started learning Hebrew.

To allay local concerns in other villages, the Interior Ministry established an investigative committee to examine other options, and in 1996, decided to split the regional council into two local councils, one of them is Ma'ale Iron, which includes Salem and the other one is Basma.

Since 2010 the Ma'ale Iron municipality building is located in the village[3] According to the 2008 census of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Salem had 1,600 residents, 99.9% of them Muslim.

49.3% of the male workforce worked in construction; 9.8% in wholesale, retail trade, and Auto Mechanism; 8.8% in manufacturing; and the rest in other sectors.