has been under Israeli occupation. Geography The village is located in the most northeastern part of the West Bank, 11 km east of the city of Jenin, adjacent to the Green Line. Faqqu'a lies just below the ridge of the Gilboa hills, which locals eponymously call Jebel Faqqu'a, overlooking the fertile Jezreel Valley (Marj Ibn Amer in Arabic), the city of Jenin and other Palestinian villages. The higher part of the range, which is located on the Israeli side, is now an area where people come to hike or to enjoy the blooming of wild flowers during springtime. The scenic view from the top is spectacular; Mount Gilboa rises to a height of 508 m above the sea level, overlooking both the Jezreel Valley in the west and the Israeli town of Bet She'an and the Jordan River Valley in the east. Villagers owned 36,000 dunams (36 km²) of land before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War in what is today Israel. The village itself lies on a hill about 450 meters above sea level. The area around Faqqu'a is largely rocky, but there are terraces, which make it suitable for a number of trees, such as almond and olive trees which dominate the habitat. There are also patches of small plains scattered around the area that have been utilized to grow different produce such as wheat, lentils in the winter, and vegetables during the summer period. Social structure The village's 3,490 inhabitants are exclusively Muslim, in contrast to some neighboring villages which have a mixed population of both Muslim and Christian families. The social structure in the village is somewhat different from a typical western community. A traditional Palestinian village is built up by a so-called family-clan structure of a hamula (clan), where social and gender relations are organized around a system of production and re-production. Even if the importance of the hamula has declined immensely, the clan-structure still exists. Every hamula can be sub-divided into extended families, in Arabic ayle. Within each ayle there are several nuclear families. The most important group today is, however, the ayle. There at least 15 extended families (ayle) in Faqqu'a today. The ten largest families are; Abu-Salameh, Al-Khateeb, A-Massad, Abu-Farha, Zeidat, Jaludi, Sharafi, Abu-Nassar, Abu-Assaf and Abu-Hussein.. Economy Agriculture had earlier been the prime source of income, but modernisation has seen most families survive by earning their livelihood from other sectors while farming land