During the Six-Day War, on June 6, 1967, Israeli troops occupied the city, and Al-Bireh has been under Israeli occupation since. Israel confiscated 346 dunams of land from Al-Bireh in order to build the Israeli settlement of Beit El (established in 1977) in addition to 780 dunams in order to build Pesagot (established in 1981). In 1994, the civil administration of the city was turned over to the Palestinian National Authority under the Oslo Accords. Al-Bireh is the second largest center of Palestinian administration after Gaza. Besides the governor's headquarters, it also hosts a considerable number of governmental, non-governmental, and private organizations, including the Ministries of Transportation, Supply, Information, Public Works and Higher Education, as well as the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Due to its proximity with Ramallah, the cities form a single constituency for elections to the Palestinian National Authority. After the 1995 accords, 39.8% of village land was classified as Area A, 5% as Area B, while the remaining 55.2% was classified as Area C. Demographics The 1997 census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics counted 27,856 residents, exactly half male and half female. The majority of the inhabitants were Palestinian refugees who made up 55.4% of the total population. In the 2007 PCBS census, there were 38,202 people living in the city. Al-Bireh is inhabited by 5 major clans: Qur'an, Hamayel, 'Abed, Qaraqra, At Taweel and Ar Rafidi. Government Al-Bireh established a city council headed by mayor Eid Musa in 1928 under the British Mandate. Eight other mayors took office either through elections or government appointments. The city had some well known mayors, including Abudul Jawad Saleh who was mayor in the 1970s until exiled by the Israelis. He later went on to become a member of the PLO executive committee and then minister of agriculture in the Palestinian Authority. In 1982, Israel instated a civil administration, but later appointed an Arab mayor, Hassan al-Tawil. In 1988, after two years in office, he was stabbed and critically wounded outside his office. In 1996, a 12-member municipal council was established by the Palestinian National Authority with Sheikh Jamal al-Tawil as mayor. In the Palestinian municipal elections in 2005, the Hamas-backed Reform and Change List won 9 of the 15 seats, while independent lists won the remaining 6. The current mayor is Azzam Esmail. In 2010, a public square in