| Yatta | |||
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| Other transcription(s) | |||
| • Arabic | يطّا | ||
| • Also spelled | Yattah (official) | ||
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Yatta
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| Coordinates: | |||
| Governorate | Hebron | ||
| Government | |||
| • Type | City | ||
| • Head of Municipality | Khalil Younis | ||
| Area | |||
| • Jurisdiction | 133,080 dunams (133.0 km2 / 51.4 sq mi) | ||
| Population (2007) | |||
| • Jurisdiction | 48,672 | ||
| Website | www.yatta-munc.org | ||
Yatta or Yattah (Arabic: يطّا; Hebrew: יטה) is a Palestinian city located in the Hebron Governorate on a high approximately 8 km south of the city of Hebron in the West Bank.[1] According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics it had a population of 48,672 in 2007.[2][3]
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Yatta is located on the site of the Biblical town of Juttah.[1] A Jewish burial complex dating to the 2nd century CE was found in the town in 1931.[4] Eusebius (4th-cent.) wrote that Yatta was "a very large village of Jews eighteen miles south of Beit Guvrin."[4]
In 1596 it was recorded as having a population of 127 Muslim families, and paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, goats and bee-hives.[5] In 1931 the population was counted as 4,034 Muslims.[6] Today, some Palestinian-Arab residents believe they originate from the Jewish kingdom of Khaybar in the south-western Arabian peninsula and are descended from the Jewish tribes of Arabia.[7] Research by Yitzhak Ben Zvi in 1928 also suggested that three out of the six extended families in Yatta belonged to the "Mehamra" group and possibly descended from an Arabian Jewish tribe.[4]
The Survey of Western Palestine described the village in the 1870s as being a "large village standing high on a ridge. It is built of stone, but some of the inhabitants live in tents. The water supply is from cisterns. On the south there are rock-cut tombs, and rock wine-presses are found all round the village. The neighbourhood is extremely stony; south of the village are scattered olives, which are conspicuous objects; on the west, a little lower under a cliff, is a small olive yard in which the camp of the Survey party was pitched in 1874; to the south-west of camp were a few figs. The inhabitants are very rich in flocks; the village owned, it was said, 17,000 sheep, beside goats, cows, camels, horses, and donkeys. The Sheikh alone had 250 sheep. ... South of the village are several tombs; one has a shallow semicircular arch cut above a small square entrance. West of the village and of el Muturrif is a very fine rock-cut wine-press. A second occurs north of the village."[8]
Seven Palestinians were killed in Yatta during the Second Intifada in different incidents from 2002-04.[9]
A Jillayeh dress from Yatta from around 1910 is part of the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) at Museum of New Mexico at Santa Fe.[10]
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