Qalqilya or Qalqiliya () is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, which serves as the administrative center of the Qalqilya Governorate. The city had a population of 51,683 in 2017. Qalqilya is surrounded by the Israeli West Bank wall, with a narrow gap in the east controlled by the Israeli military and a tunnel to the Palestinian town of Hableh.United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Qalqiliya Closures map for December 2011 Qalqilya is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority (as part of Area A), while remaining under Israeli military occupation.
According to Edward Henry Palmer, the name came from "a type of pomegranate", or "gurgling of water".Palmer, 1881, p. 183 Qalqilya was known as Calecailes in the Roman period, and Calcelie in the Frankish sources from the early Medieval times. The word "Qalqilya" might be derived from a Canaanite term which means "rounded stones or hills".
History The vicinity of Qalqilya has been populated since prehistoric times, as attested to by the discovery of prehistoric flint tools.
Ottoman period Qalqilya appeared in Ottoman tax registers (transliterated as Qalqili) in 1596, as a village in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Bani Sa'b in the Liwa of Nablus. It paid a total of 3,910 akçe in taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, and goats or beehives.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 140
Modern qalqilya began as a daughter village of Baqa al-Hatab in the West Bank.Marom, Roy (2026). Settled Land: The Arab Countryside in Israel/Palestine (in Hebrew). Ra'anana: Lamda Scholarship, The Open University of Israel Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-965-06-1769-1.
Edward Robinson described Kulakilieh in 1838 as a village in Beni Sa'ab district, west of Nablus.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p. 127 An Ottoman census listed the village in the nahiya (sub-district) of Bani Sa'b, in .
Qalqilya was described in 1882 as "a large somewhat straggling village, with cisterns to the north and a pool on the south-west. The houses are badly built."Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 165 Residents from nearby Baqat al-Hatab move to the city in 1883, and a municipal council to administer Qalqilya was established in 1909.
British Mandate period
An official land survey recorded 27,915 dunams of land owned in 1945.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 76 Of this, 3701 dunams were for citrus and bananas, 3,232 were plantations and irrigable land, 16,197 used for cereals,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 127 while 273 dunams were built-up (urban) land.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 177
According to Sami Hadawi, the town had been "one of the most prosperous in Palestine, owning extensive orange groves and serving as one of the main vegetable markets of the country."Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: Palestine between 1914-1979. Revised edition. New York: The Caravan Books, 1979, 109.
1948 War During the war, many inhabitants from Kafr Saba, Abu Kishk, Miska, Biyar 'Adas and Shaykh Muwannis resettled in Qalqilya. Residents of Qalqilya who left during the fighting returned with the arrival of the Jordanian Arab Legion and the Iraqi expeditionary force, apart from 2,000 upper-class residents who settled in Nablus for economic reasons.Yoav Gelber, Independence Versus Nakba; Kinneret–Zmora-Bitan–Dvir Publishing, 2004, , p.236 Hadawi argues that the armistice lines established in 1949 "severed all [Qalqilya's] orange groves in favour of Israel," leaving the town "landless except for its rocky areas towards the east."
Jordanian occupation After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the area was occupied by Jordan in 1950. On the night of 10 October 1956, the Israeli army launched a raid against Qalqilya police station in response to a Jordanian attack on Israeli bus, among other incidents. The attack was ordered by Moshe Dayan and involved several thousand soldiers. During the fighting, a paratroop company was surrounded by Jordanian troops and escaped under close air-cover from four Israeli Air Force aircraft. Eighteen Israelis and 70 to 90 Jordanians were killed in the operation.Morris, 1993, pp. 397–399.
Post 1967 In the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967, Qalqilya came under Israeli rule. Dozens of inhabitants were expelled to Jordan as part of the Palestinian expulsions of 1967 known as the Naksa. 850 buildings were razed.Masalha, 2007, 1967: Why Did the Palestinians Leave? After the IDF's psychological warfare unit made a visit to the city and many of the residents had fled, the UN representative Nils-Göran Gussing noted that 850 of the town's 2,000 houses were demolished. In his memoirs, Moshe Dayan wrote that these actions ultimately constituted "collective punishment" which was contrary to government policy. The villagers were eventually allowed to return and the reconstruction of damaged houses was financed by the military authorities.
As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), control of Qalqilya was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on 17 December 1995.
In 2003, the Israeli West Bank barrier was built, encircling the town and separating it from agricultural lands on the other side of the wall.The Wall (Qalqilya) 2003 Relief Web, Retrieved 10th Dec 2009
In November 2015, Israel arrested what it alleged to be a network of 24 Hamas militants active in the city.Zitun, Yoav. Hamas network exposed by IDF and Shin Bet in Qalqiliya. Ynet News. 2015-11-10.
On 20 October 2017, the municipality of Qalqilya named a street after Saddam Hussein and erected a memorial with his likeness. The monument was unveiled at a ceremony attended by the Qalqilya District Governor Rafi Rawajba and two other Palestinian officials. It bears the slogan "Saddam Hussein – The Master of the Martyrs in Our Age".
On 19 June 2022, a 53-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces as he sought to cross the Israeli West Bank barrier, which encircles Qalqilya. According to the IDF, he damaged the security fence in an attempt to cross into Israeli territory. It's unclear whether he was armed.
On 22 June 2024, a 60-year-old Israeli citizen was shot dead in Qalqilya by local residents. The victim, from Petah Tikva, regularly bought vegetables in the city. Following the shooting, his car was set on fire, and his personal documents were taken. This incident was the third in Qalqilya within 48 hours, following another attack on Thursday, where a 70-year-old Israeli was killed, and the elimination of two Islamic Jihad operatives who planned an attack.
Geography
Qalqilya is located in the northwestern West Bank, straddling the border with Israel. It is 16 kilometers southwest of the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, and the nearest localities are the Arab-Israeli city of Tira and the Palestinian hamlet of 'Arab al-Ramadin al-Shamali to the northeast, the Palestinian village of Nabi Ilyas to the east, the Palestinian hamlets 'Arab Abu Farda and 'Arab ar-Ramadin al-Janubi and the Israeli settlement of Alfei Menashe to the southwest, and the Palestinian village Habla and Arab-Israeli town of Jaljuliya to the south. It contains the point in the West Bank closest to the Mediterranean Sea, with about 14 km to the coast at Shefayim.
The average annual rainfall 587.4 millimeters and the average annual temperature is 19 degrees Celsius.
Demographics
It had a population of 13 Muslim households, according to an Ottoman census in 1596.
Victor Guérin found a population of 200 in 1870.Guérin, 1875, p. 356-357
The British Mandate authorities conducted a census in 1922, which found that Qalqilya had a population of 2,803 (2,794 Muslims and 9 Christians),.Barron, 1923, Table IX, Sub-district of Tulkarem, p. 27 The population was 3,867 (3,855 Muslims and 12 Christians), in a total of 796 houses, according to the 1931 census.Mills, 1932, p. 56 The population was listed at 4,503 (including 4 Jews) in the 1938 census. The population of Qalqilya was 5,850 (5,840 Muslims and 10 Christians, according to the 1945 census.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 21)
The population of Qalqilya was 11,401, according to a Jordanian census in 1961.Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p. 8 A census in September 1967 found 8,922 persons, of whom 1,837 were originally from Israeli territory.Joel Perlmann. The 1967 Census of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Digitized Version. Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Levy Economics. Institute of Bard College. November 2011 – February 2012. [Digitized from: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, 1967 Conducted in the Areas Administered by the IDF, Vols. 1–5 (1967–70), and Census of Population and Housing: East Jerusalem, Parts 1 and 2 (1968–70). http://www.levyinstitute.org/palestinian-census/.] Vol. 1, Table 2.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) census recorded Qalqilya's population to be 22,168 in 1997. The majority of the inhabitants (69.8%) were Palestinian refugees or their descendants.. 1997 Census. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). 1999. In the 2007 census, Qalqilya's population was 41,739 (50.9% male and (49.1% female)). The number of registered households was 7,866. In the 2017 census, Qalqiliya's population was 51,683.
Government Hamas won the 2006 municipal elections in Qalqiliya and one of its members, Wajih Qawas, became mayor, although he was incarcerated by Israel for much of his term. On 12 September 2009, the PNA dismissed Qawas for allowing Qalqiliya's debt to grow unchecked, failing to attract international funding for city projects and ignoring orders by the Palestinian government. Qawas, however, viewed his dismissal as a result of the ongoing feud between Hamas, which dominates the PNA in the Gaza Strip and Fatah, which dominates the PNA in the West Bank. Human rights groups criticized Qawas's dismissal, condemning the intervention by the central Palestinian authorities in the affairs of an elected official. During the 2012 municipal elections, Fatah member Othman Dawood was elected mayor.
Economy
Between 1967 and 1995 almost 80 percent of Qalqilya's labor force worked for Israeli companies or industries in the construction and agriculture sectors. The remaining 20% engaged in trade and commerce, marketing across the Green Line. According to a field survey taken by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ), 45% of Qalqilya's working population was employed by government, 25% worked in agriculture, 15% worked in trade and commerce, 10% worked in industry and 5% worked in Israeli labor. In 2012, the unemployment rate was 22%, with those most affected formerly employed in agriculture, trade and services.
Qalqilya is particularly known for its citrus crop and of its total of 10,252 dunams of land, (of which 5,930 are arable) 1802 dunams (about 17.6% of the city's land and over 30% of its arable land) are planted with citrus trees. Other major crops are olives and vegetables. Local industries include the manufacture of foodstuffs, olive oil, dairy products, soap, glass, stone, marble and building materials, in addition to the manufacture of wood, and mineral water companies.
The Qalqilya Zoo, established in 1986, is currently the only zoo in the West Bank and in Palestine, and, according to its owner, is the city's single-largest employer. It serves as one of Qalqilya's main attractions. The zoo houses 170 animals and works closely with zoologists from the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo and the Ramat Gan Safari.Splish, splash, new Kalkiya's hippo's takin' a bath, Haaretz The only factory for prosthetic limbs in the northern West Bank is in Qalqilya.
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