Silwad (Arabic: سلواد) is a Palestinian town located north-east of Ramallah, about 5 km away from the Nablus-Jerusalem highway of the West Bank, in the State of Palestine.

Silwad experiences cold and humid winters with several days of snow almost every year with an average annual precipitation of about 750 millimeters (29.5 inches).

[4] In the spring of 1697, Henry Maundrell noted two "Arab villages," first "Geeb" and then "Selwid," both on the west side of the road on the way south from Nablus to Jerusalem.

[7] Grossman notes that during the Ottoman era, Silwad was populated by people of Bedouin origin who relocated to this area from elsewhere.

Jordan confiscated lands of Silwad and nearby Ein Yabrud for the construction of a military camp before the Six-Day War.

[21] Silwad villagers have petitioned the High Court to be allowed to farm their traditional lands to which they had been denied access for a decade.

[23] A 22-year-old Silwad bricklayer, Thaer Hamad, used a World War II-era M1 Garand rifle and 30 rounds to fire from a nearby hill, at Wadi Haramiya, on an Israeli checkpoint, near the settlements of Ofra and Shilo,[24] killing 7 soldiers and three civilian settlers.

[27][28][29][30] Robi Danelin, the mother of one of the dead soldiers, who said her son had served reluctantly in the West Bank, wrote a letter of reconciliation to Hamad's family.

Her letter was rebuffed by Thaer, who brusquely dismissed what he described as an equation between casualties among soldiers in an army of occupation and martyrs killed in the course of their struggle for freedom.

[31] Orwa Abd al-Wahhab Hammad (14[24]/17), a US citizen who came from New Orleans to the West Bank when he was 6, and was a cousin of Thaer Hamad,[24] was shot dead with a bullet to the neck which exited from his head[32][33] during a demonstration in the village, reportedly by an Israeli sniper.