[9][10] Victor Guérin argued that both Eusebius and Jerome had confused the Yanoḥah of the tribe of Ephraim with the quite distinct, homophonous village belonging to the tribe of Naphtali (p. 7) Modern researchers, following Guerin, have suggested that the Biblical Yanoḥah refers to Khirbet Yanun, as pottery sherds from lron Age I has been found there, and not at Yanun.
[12] There is a shrine, formerly used by villagers as a mosque, believed to be of the prophet Nun on a hillock called Nabinun three hundred metres east of Lower Yanun.
[3][12][13] Byzantine pottery and other signs of ancient habitation including tombs carved into rock have been found at the village site.
[15][16] In 1596, Yanun appeared in Ottoman tax registers as a village in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal, part of Sanjak Nablus, with a population of 18 Muslim households.
[9] In the 19th century, Yanun was settled by some 50 Bushnaks (Bosniaks), Muslims from Bosnia, after their country was ceded to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Congress of Berlin.
[18] According to Vikram Sura, Itamar settlers used to trade with local farmers and visit Yanun to enjoy refreshments like cardamom-spiced coffee and mint tea there.
Relations changed with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in October 2000, when 13 Israeli Arabs were shot dead during the suppression of a riot protesting the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount.
Yanun lies far from the main areas where Palestinian militants and the IDF subsequently clashed, and till then grievances between the two communities were less than the norm.
[31] The youths on Avri Ran's hilltop outpost argue that they have a prerogative to respond with violence when they feel their Palestinian neighbours are preventing them from realizing their right, as legal heirs of God's bequest, to work the land.
[36] A Council spokesman for the Israeli settlement of Itamar, in response to queries about the incidents, replied that he was unaware of claims of harassment and that settlers were trying to keep Palestinian villagers away from themselves.
The last of 25 families relocated to nearby Aqraba after a reported worsening in their harassment by Itamar residents, including Avri Ran and his organization, the Hilltop Youth.
Rabbi Froman, armed with a heavy pile of books, including the Gemara and Shulchan Aruch, turned up to show that these texts actually forbid stealing olives from non-Jews.
[42] According to an IDF source, the Israeli army intervened in a stone-throwing fray between settlers and villagers, and used tear-gas to stop the clash.
[46] According to an official of the Nablus Governorate, one of the victims, Jawdat Bani Jabir, was shot in the face and the foot by soldiers and subsequently stabbed by settlers.
[47] According to the EAPPI, "The attack began mid-afternoon, when three Palestinian farmers working in their fields were set upon by settlers armed with machine guns and knives.
When EAs arrived at the scene at the request of the head of the village, there were also fires burning in two wheat fields and an olive grove.
[48] The civilian population of Yanun, along with that of Bil'in, Jinba and several other places, in the judgement of scholar and Ta'ayush peace activist David Shulman, has been subject to practices that are "singularly cruel".
Amira Hass, writing for Haaretz, argues that the systematic attacks on Palestinian villagers like those at Yanun, who are Semites, constitute a form of antisemitism, with the difference that such assaults in the West Bank are rarely if ever reported.
[52] Driving in from Aqraba, there are views of hillocks full of olive groves meet the eye, while to the right the land falls steeply down into the Jordan Valley.