ariel was founded in 1978 on land that was seized for military needs and on land that was declared state land, including cultivated farmland of palestinian villages in the district and on rocky land the villagers used for grazing their flocks. at the beginning of 1978, a group of israelis formed in order to create a settlement in the hills of the northern part of the west bank made a formal request to the government to be given land to build a new community and were given three options by the army; the area near the 'lone tree' which would later become barkan, the area which would later become kfar tapuach, and a hill near kifl hares that was known to the local arabs as ' jabel mawat', the hill of death, because of inhospitable terrain. the leader of this group, ron nachman, chose the latter because of its strategic location on a possible jordanian invasion route towards israel's main population centre of tel aviv. in the spring of 1978, some of the group's men erected tents on the chosen hilltop, and in august 1978, a total of forty families came to live in the settlement.