Turmus Ayya

Etymology

Adolf Neubauer proposed to identify this place as Thormasia, a location mentioned in the Talmud. Scholars such as Michael Avi-Yonah and Shemuel Yeivin, noting phonetic similarities, have proposed identifying Turmus Ayya with Tur Shimon, a place mentioned in rabbinic literature as having been destroyed during the Bar Kokhba revolt. Other scholars, notably Yoel Elitsur, propose that the name "Turmus" may have derived from the Latin word thermae, a public hot bath. According to this theory, the original name of the site was Ayya, and it is believed that the bath constructed there, presumably during Roman-Byzantine times, led to the addition of the prefix "Turmus" for the site.

Geography

Turmus Ayya is located 22 km northeast of the city of Ramallah. Its surrounding villages are Sinjil and Khirbet Abu Falah as well as the Israeli settlement of Shilo. Its jurisdiction is about 18,000 acre. Turmus Ayya is 720 m above sea level. It is also the northernmost town in the Ramallah District. Turmus Ayya's climate is similar to that of the central West Bank, which is rainy in the winter, and hot and humid in the summer.

History

Potsherds from the late Iron Age (8–7th century BCE) period and later have been found, and it is estimated that the village has existed continuously since then.

Turmus Ayya is generally accepted as being the Turbasaim in Crusader sources. A little northeast of Turmus Ayya is Khirbet Ras ad-Deir/Deir el-Fikia, believed to be the Crusader village of Dere. In 1145, half of the income from both villages were given to the Abbey of Mount Tabor, so that they could maintain the church at Sinjil. In 1175, all three villages; Turmus Ayya, Dere and Sinjil, were transferred to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Ottoman era

In 1517, Turmus Ayya was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the rest of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 43 households, all Muslim, and paid taxes on wheat, barley, olive trees, vineyards, fruit trees, goats and/or beehives; a total of 7,200 akçe. 11/24 of the revenue went to a Waqf.

In 1838, Edward Robinson noted that Turmus Aya was within the province of Jerusalem, but the province of Nablus was just north of it.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 3, p. 83 It was further noted that it was situated "on a low rocky mound in the level valley."

In Turmus Ayya's cemetery, several graves have headstones that date back to the Ottoman Era.

French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village in 1870 and found ancient cisterns, a broken lintel with a garland carved upon it and the fragments of a column. He found about seven hundred inhabitants The village was administered by two sheikhs and divided into two different areas. Since the ancient cisterns were almost completely dry, women fetched water from Ain Siloun or Ain Sindjel. An official Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that "Turmus Aya" had a total of 88 houses and a population of 301, though the population count included men only.

In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine Turmus Ayya was described as "a village on a low knoll, in a fertile plain, with a spring to the south. The village is of moderate size, and surrounded by fruit trees. On the south at the foot of the mound is the conspicuous white dome of the sacred place." In 1896, the population of Turmus Ayya was estimated to be about 834 persons.

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Turmus Ayya had a population of 707, all Muslim, while in the 1931 census, the village had 185 occupied houses and a population of 717, all Muslims except one Christian woman.

In the 1945 statistics the population was 960, all Muslim, while the total land area was 17,611 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 3,665 dunams were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 7,357 for cereals, while 54 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) areas.

Jordanian era

In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Turmus Ayya came under Jordanian rule. It was annexed by Jordan in 1950.

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 1,620 inhabitants.

1967-present

Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Turmus Ayya has been under Israeli occupation. According to an Israeli census in 1967, there were 1,562 people. By 1989, the population rose to 5,140.

Under the Oslo Accords of 1995, 64.7% of village land was classified as Area B, and the remaining 35.3% as Area C. Israel has confiscated 752 dunams of village land for the Israeli settlement of Shilo, and another 372 dunams for Mizpe Rahel.

In December 2014, the town was the site of the death of Palestinian official Ziad Abu Ein during a protest against Israeli occupation.

Settler violence

Turmus Ayya is a target of Israeli settler violence. According to B'tselem, in the six first months of 2023, Turmus Ayya was attacked ten times by Israeli settlers. On 21 June 2023 hundreds of masked Israeli settlers, responding to the killing of four Israeli civilians in a neighboring settlement, firebombed around 30 houses and 60 cars; one Palestinian resident, Omar Qattin (27), was shot dead.

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson denounced the attacks as "acts of terror conducted by criminals", adding that such incidents push attacked civilian populations into extremism." In the weeks following the attack, the IDF placed five suspects in administrative detention.

Attacks continued throughout July 2024, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting that settlers had burned down farmhouses and generators on four consecutive days.

On April 4th, 2025, a 14-year old Palestinian American boy named Omar Rabea was shot and killed in the outskirts of the village. His two friends who were also shot - one with a critical injury to the stomach - managed to run into the village. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry cited these extra-judicial killings as being part of a long list of crimes committed by the IDF and settlers against the civilians of the village.

The IDF responded to the incidient by posting a thermal capture of the three boys being shot. The IDF claimed the footage shows "terrorists" throwing rocks. According to reports by the IDF, Unit 636 was operating in the area "eliminating one terrorist and hitting two additional terrorists". The IDF said it would "continue eliminating terrorists" in the area.

On August 18 2025, a farmland belonging to a Palestinian family was attacked by masked Israeli settlers nearby, destroying olive trees and setting fire to other vegetation, settlers in quad bikes chased out rescue teams trying to enter the area.

Jasper incident

On 19 October 2025, during the annual olive harvest near Turmus Ayya, hundreds of settlers descended onto olive farmers, burnt cars, and beat multiple farmers. One masked Israeli settler clubbed a 55 year old woman in the head, leaving her unconscious and hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage. The assault and the ensuing chase were filmed by U.S. journalist Jasper Nathaniel, whose footage circulated widely online and in news reports racking millions of views on X (formerly Twitter).

Infrastructure

Healthcare

The Hugo Chavez Ophthalmic Hospital in Turmus Ayya is the first governmental hospital in Palestine dedicated exclusively to eye care. Established to address the community's need for specialized ophthalmic services, the hospital was inaugurated in October 2018.

The hospital comprises four floors, encompassing a total area of 7,300 square meters, and is divided into two interconnected buildings linked by an open, circular, eye-shaped plaza. The main building includes a basement housing facilities for heating, laundry, oxygen supply, kitchens, x-ray services, and maintenance. The ground floor features fourteen external clinics, an emergency room, a pharmacy, a waiting area, and an eyeglasses and contact lens store. The first floor contains administrative offices, patient rooms, and offices for accounting and staff. The second floor consists of two main operating rooms, a secondary operating room, a LASEK surgery room, and a cornea bank. The adjacent building houses lecture halls, a meeting room, a cafeteria, a dining hall, and accommodations for nurses and doctors. Designed with environmental sustainability in mind, the hospital features an on-site wastewater treatment unit.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital was repurposed as a treatment and isolation center for patients from the Ramallah District, addressing the emergent healthcare needs.

Economy

, an estimated 80% of the residents are Palestinian binationals with US citizenship, and various media and NGO reports put the share of US citizens at over 80–90%. Since the 1960s and 1970s, many families have emigrated to the United States and Latin America (notably Panama), where they built businesses and professional careers and then sent remittances back to the village. These remittances have financed extensive residential construction: rows of large villas with red-tiled roofs, gardens, and swimming pools. Israeli media have described Turmus Ayya as “the richest Palestinian village in the West Bank”, and report that local residents often refer to it as the “eastern suburb of Washington, D.C.” because so many homeowners are Palestinian-Americans who return in the summer.

Many households depend primarily on income earned abroad, but the village also functions as a local economic centre. Agriculture—especially the cultivation of olives and other tree crops—remains important; families from Turmus Ayya own extensive groves, and reporting on the annual olive harvest around the village describes how it provides a significant part of their livelihood despite increasing access restrictions and settler violence. A feature in the Israeli press notes that labourers who work Turmus Ayya’s agricultural lands often come from neighbouring villages, “making the town an economic center” for the surrounding rural area.

The return of diaspora families has also led to investment in leisure and service-sector projects. One example is the Turmus Ayya Equestrian Club, founded in 2007 by Ashraf Rabi, whose family emigrated to Panama and the United States around 1980 before returning to the village and establishing the club as a local recreation and tourism facility.

References

Bibliography

• (p. 279; but see Abel 1938:257; Elitzur 1985b.)
• (Saulcy, 1854, vol 1, p. 104)

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