Umm ar-Rihan

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Umm ar-Rehan (Arabic: أم الريحان, meaning "Mother of Basil"; also transliterated Umm Rihan or Um al-Rehan) is a Palestinian village of 447 inhabitants located high on the northwestern hills of the Jenin Governorate of the State of Palestine, 14 kilometers (8.7 mi) from Jenin.

[6] The wood near the village is the site of a memorial to early Palestinian militant leader Izz ad-Din al-Qassam of the Black Hand, killed in a gunfight with the British Palestine Police Force.

On August 27, 1998, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used bulldozers to uproot thousands of fruits trees on tens of dunums of land belonging to Umm ar-Rehan and az-Zawiya villages to prepare the ground for the construction of two new settlements.

[5] The 4,700 people who live in the Barta'a area enclave depend on this government clinic which has a pharmacy and also offers counseling on health awareness, but lacks medical specialists, laboratory testing and family planning services.

[15] On 30 April 2004, armed Israeli settlers entered the village and fired shots in the air before briefly taking over the primary school.

[16] An official from the Education Ministry of the Palestinian National Authority and villager Faruat Zaid said they tried to contact the IDF about the raid, but there had been no response.

[23] A Bar-Ilan University team led by Shimon Dar performed a larger survey in 1986, mapping hundreds of roads, cisterns, silos, homes, defensive structures, towers, oil presses, and reservoirs.

[25] A 2,500 ha in the vicinity of the village, the Um Al-Reehan Nature Reserve, encompassing mainly remnant forested land, has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a resident population of Egyptian vultures.