Overview
In Roman times, the town of Umm ar-Rehan covered an area of 36-40 hectares, consisting of approximately a hundred houses, a road system, and a Roman bathhouse. Archaeological artifacts dating back to Byzantine times have also been uncovered there.
The wood near the village is 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.
Under the 1947 United Nations partition plan for Palestine, Umm ar-Rehan was to form part of an Arab Palestinian state. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Umm ar-Rehan fell under de facto Jordanian occupation like other towns and villages in the West Bank, and after the 1967 Six-Day War, under Israeli occupation.
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. On October 10, 2000, more land belonging to Umm ar-Rehan was bulldozed to expand the Shaked and Hinnanit settlements.
In the months following the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Israeli checkpoints were erected on the eastern and southern roads to nearby Tura al-Gharbiya and Ya'bad, limiting access to the rest of the West Bank; the checkpoints were preserved as crossings in the Israeli West Bank barrier. Umm ar-Rehan's location in area east of the Green Line and west of the Israeli West Bank barrier is often referred to as the "Seam Zone".
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