Budrus

History

"Budrus" is Arabic for "Peter" and in ancient times the village was known as Patris. The site of the modern town is just east of the 1949 armistice line, while the ancient town was probably 2 km away at Khirbet Budrus, on the west side of the line. It was mentioned in the Jewish Tosefta (Demai 1) as being included in the boundary of the southern mountains of Judea.

Archeological remains from the Hellenistic and the Byzantine eras have been found.

Ottoman era

In 1596, Budrus appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Ramla of the Liwa of Gaza. It had a population of 46 Muslim households and paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives or summercrops, goats or beehives and a press for olives or grapes.

Budrus was described in the 1870s as "a small village, with olive-groves and cisterns. It has near it two sacred places, and a graveyard near one (Imam 'Aly) on the west."

British Mandate era

In a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Budrus had a population of 334; all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 430 Muslims in a total of 98 houses.

In 1945 the population was 510, all Muslims, while the total land area was 7,935 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 636 dunums were plantation or irrigated, 2,412 were allotted to cereals, while 18 dunams were built-up (urban) areas.

1948-1967

In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Budrus came under Jordanian rule.

1967-present

After the Six-Day War in 1967, Budrus has been under Israeli occupation. Budrus is flanked on the west and north by the Israeli West Bank barrier and has regularly been the site of protests against it since 2003.

A boy from the village, 16-year-old Samir Awad, was shot to death in February 2013 near the separation barrier, where he reportedly had gone with friends to throw stones at soldiers. According to an investigation by B'tselem, he was shot while fleeing, once in the leg, and then further, while attempting to run away, once in the back and the head. A military investigation made a preliminary finding that the soldiers had fired in contravention of open-fire regulations. The house of his family was later subject to assault with concussion grenades, injuring several members, while another son, Abed, was arrested and taken to an unknown destination.