Kafr ad-Dik
Kafr ad-Dik is a Palestinian town in the Salfit Governorate, about 9.5 kilometers west of Salfit in the northern West Bank. In 2017 it had 5,551 residents. The town covers about 15.2 square kilometers, with 578 dunams built up.
Most people in 2007 worked in agriculture, while unemployment was high (about 60%). The land totals around 15,228 dunams, with 1,953 dunams classified as Area B and 13,275 dunams as Area C after the Oslo II accords. The settlements of Peduel and Alei Zahav were built on 1,448 dunams of land claimed by Kafr ad-Dik.
On the outskirts lie the archaeological ruins of Deir Samaan. Historical records link the site to Crusader Caphaer, with cisterns, tombs, mosques, and a tower noted by visitors in the 19th century.
In the Ottoman period, the village appears in tax records; in 1596 it had Muslim families. By the 19th century, travelers described rock-cut tombs and other ancient features, and the village was noted in Ottoman and later surveys. Under the British Mandate, population counts rose from 487 Muslims in 1922 to 665 in 1931, and by 1945 the population was 870 Muslims with 15,308 dunams of land.
After 1948, Kafr ad-Dik came under Jordanian rule and was annexed by Jordan in 1950. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, it has been under Israeli occupation. The 1995 accords split its land into 14.5% Area B and 85.5% Area C. Some land was expropriated for Israeli settlements, including 3,000 dunams in the Thahir Subih neighborhood, with trees uprooted and land leveled; Israel describes these lands as state lands.
Residents of nearby communities—such as Deir Istiya, Sanniriya, Kafr Jammal, Attil, Annaba, Ballut, and Nablus—trace their ancestry to Kafr ad-Dik.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:01 (CET).