Qusra

Location

Qusra is located 16.3 km south east of Nablus. It is bordered by Majdal Bani Fadil and Duma to the east, Jurish to the north, Talfit to the west, and Jalud to the south.

History

Ottoman era

In 1596 the village appeared in Ottoman tax registers under the name of Qusayra as being in the nahiya of Jabal Qubal in the liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 14 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and/or beehives; a total of 3,000 akçe.

According to Finkelstein et al., Qusra has never been surveyed. They estimated early Ottoman remains based on Hütteroth and Abdulfattah.

In 1838 Qusra (spelled Kausara) was classified as a Muslim village in the subdistrict of el-Beitawi. The French explorer Victor Guérin described passing by several "magnificent" oaks on the way to the village in May 1870. The village, which he called Kesrah, was described as having about 200 inhabitants. Guérin also noted several ancient rock-cut cisterns, the largest of which was at the lower part of the village.

In 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) noted that: "West of the village are foundations, and heaps of stones." SWP also described the village (called Kusrah) as: "A village of middling size, on low ground, with olive-trees." In the early years of the 20th century, towards the end of Ottoman rule, Qusra was part of the Jalud-based sheikhdom of Mashiyah Dar al-Haj Mahmud which was nominally administered by the Nasr Mansur family.

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Qusra had a population of 707, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 851, still all Muslim, in 213 occupied houses.

In the 1945 statistics Qusra had a population of 1,120, all Muslim, with 8,938 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 2,763 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 3,091 used for cereals, while 69 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

Jordanian era

In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Qusra came under Jordanian rule.

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 1,312 inhabitants.

1967-present

After the Six-Day War in 1967, Qusra has been under Israeli occupation.

After the 1995 accords, 50% of the village land was classified as Area B land, the remaining 50% as Area C. 177 dunums of village land was confiscated by Israel in order to build the Israeli settlement of Migdalim.

On 24 December 2014, Israeli forces destroyed with bulldozers over 400 square metres of the village's traditional stone walls close to Migdalim.

On the night of 4–5 September 2011, a group of presumably Israeli settlers entered the village at 3 a.m., vandalized the village's Al-Nurayn mosque and tried to set it on fire. They smashed windows, rolled burning tires inside, and wrote "Muhammad is a pig" in Hebrew on its wall. The attack on the mosque came shortly after Israeli police officers had destroyed three illegal structures in the settlement outpost of Migron north of Jerusalem. According to Agence France Press, the graffiti also included a Star of David, and the name “Migron”. The attack, not the first of its kind, is viewed as part of a policy called “price tag” followed by a radical segment among the settlers, in which they respond to attempts by the Israeli security forces to demolish unauthorized Jewish settlements with attacks against Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack and called on the Middle East Quartet to get involved. The Israeli government also condemned the attack, and has instructed its authorities to “bring those responsible to justice,” and urged all sides to avoid the potential for escalation. The European Union representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton issued a statement which strongly condemned the attack on the mosque, stating: "These provocations seriously undermine efforts to build the necessary trust for a comprehensive peace in the region; [...] attacks against places of worship undermine the freedom of religion or belief which is a fundamental human right," calling on Israeli authorities "to investigate the attack, bring the perpetrators to justice and prevent such attacks happening again." The United States Department of State also strongly condemned the “dangerous and provocative attacks” on the mosque and called on those responsible to be arrested and “subject to the full force of the law”.