Beit Hanoun or Beit Hanun () is a city on the northeast edge of the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 32,187 in mid-2006. It is administered by the Hamas administration. It is located by the Hanoun stream, just away from the Israeli town of Sderot. After 19 Palestinian civilians died during shelling by the IDF in 2006, the United Nations appointed a fact-finding commission, to be led by Desmond Tutu, to investigate if the shelling constituted a war crime; but the investigation was cancelled due to the lack of Israeli cooperation. History The Ayyubids defeated the Crusaders at a battle in Umm al-Nasser hill, just west of Beit Hanoun in 1239, and built the Umm al-Naser Mosque ("Mother of Victories Mosque") there in commemoration of the victory. A Mamluk post office was located in Beit Hanoun as well. Ottoman era Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Beit Hanoun appeared in the 1596 tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Gaza, part of Gaza Sanjak. It had a population of 36 Muslim households and paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on wheat, barley, summer crops, fruit trees, occasional revenues, goats and/ or beehives; a total of 9,300 akçe. Pierre Jacotin named the village Deir Naroun on his map from 1799. In 1838 Edward Robinson passed by, and described how "all were busy with the wheat harvest; the reapers were in the fields; donkeys and camels were moving homewards with their high loads of sheaves; while on the threshing-floors near the village I counted not less than thirty gangs of cattle.." He further noted it as a Muslim village, located in the Gaza district. In May 1863, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village. Among the gardens he observed indications of ancient constructions in the shape of cut stones, fragments of columns, and bases. Socin found from an official Ottoman village list from about 1870 that Beit Hanoun had 94 houses and a population of 294, though the population count included men, only. Hartmann found that Bet Hanun had 95 houses. In 1883 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described it as a small adobe village, "surrounded by gardens, with a well to the west. The ground is flat, and to the east is a pond beside the road." British Mandate era In