Early Roman period (63 BCE – 135 CE) Bayt Nattif stood on the much-travelled ancient road connecting
Eleutheropolis (Beth Guvrin, later
Bayt Jibrin) with Jerusalem, about midway between the two towns. In the Roman province of
Judaea (6–135 CE), the town became the capital of one of the eleven
toparchies or prefectures of the province, receiving certain administrative responsibilities, and is known from some classical sources by the name Betholetepha. During
the first Jewish uprising against Rome (66-73), in the 12th year of the reign of
Nero, when the Roman army had suffered a great defeat under
Cestius Gallus, with more than five thousand foot soldiers killed, the people of the surrounding countryside feared reprisals from the Roman army and made haste to appoint generals and to fortify their settlements. Generals were at that time appointed for
Idumea, namely, over the entire region immediately south and south-west of Jerusalem, and which incorporated within it the towns of Bethletephon, Betaris (corrected to read
Begabris), Kefar Tobah,
Adurim, and
Maresha. Later in the revolt, in spring 68 CE, the city was destroyed by
Vespasian and
Titus, as recorded by
Josephus.
Late Roman and Byzantine periods (135 – early 7th century) in Haifa Archaeological findings indicate that after the revolt, during the Late Roman period, the town has been resettled with pagan
Roman citizens and army veterans, as part of the Romanisation process of the rural area surrounding
Aelia Capitolina and reaching downhill towards Eleutheropolis. In 1838
Edward Robinson visited, and remarks that their party was very well received by the villagers. He further noted that the villagers belonged to the "
Keis" faction, and that they were a Muslim village, located in the el-Arkub District, southwest of
Jerusalem. By the mid-19th century, a rift had divided families in the region over control of the district
Bani Hasan, until at length it broke out into actual fighting between the Keis (Qays) faction on the one side and the Yaman faction on the other.
Meron Benvenisti, writing of this period, says that Sheikh 'Utham al-Lahham waged "a bloody war against Sheikh Mustafa Abu Ghosh, whose capital and fortified seat was in the village of
Suba." In 1855, Mohammad Atallah in
Bayt Nattif, a cousin of 'Utham al-Lahham, contested his rule over the region. In order to win support from Abu Ghosh, Mohammad Atallah gave his allegiance to the Yaman faction. This is said to have enraged 'Utham al-Lahham. He raised a fighting force and fell on
Bayt Nattif on 3 January 1855. The village lost 21 dead. According to an eyewitness description by the horrified British consul,
James Finn, their corpses were terribly mutilated. In the mid-nineteenth century, Beit Naṭṭīf was among several Hebron-area villages—along with
Zakariyya,
Beit Jibrīn,
Ṣurīf, and
al-Dawāymeh—whose territories were expanded to include earlier ruin sites. Following the Ottoman land reforms of 1858–1859, these villages received legal title to formerly state-owned (mīrī) lands, marking a phase of agrarian reorganization and renewed cultivation in the Judean Foothills. In 1863
Victor Guérin visited twice. The first time he visited he estimated that the village contained about one thousand inhabitants. He further noted that the houses were crudely built, one of them, which was assigned to the reception of foreigners, the
al-Medhafeh, was a square tower. Above the entrance of the
al-Medhafeh was a large block for
lintel, featuring elegant mouldings, Guérin assumed it came from an ancient destroyed monument. Many other ancient stones were embedded here and there in private homes. Two
wells, several
cisterns and a number of
silos and stores carved in the rock, and in continued use, were also ancient.
Socin, citing an official Ottoman village list compiled around 1870, noted that Bayt Nattif had 66 houses and a population of 231, though the population count included men only.
Hartmann found that
Bayt Nattif had 120 houses. In 1883, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine described Bayt Nattif as being "a village of fair size, standing high on a flat-topped ridge between two broad valleys. On the south, about 400 feet below, is a spring (
`Ain el Kezbeh), and on the north a rock-cut tomb was found. There are fine olive-groves round the place, and the open valleys are very fertile in corn." Around 1896, the population of
Bayt Nattif was estimated to be about 672 persons.
British Mandate (1920–1948) For all practical purposes, the British inherited from their Turkish counterparts the existing laws in regard to land tenures as defined in the
Ottoman Land Code, to which laws there was later added subsidiary legislation. At the time of the British occupation the land tax was collected at the rate of 12.5% of the gross yield of the land. Crops were assessed on the threshing floor or in the field and the tithe was collected from the cultivators. In 1925, additional legislation provided that taxation on crops and other produce not exceed 10%. In 1928, as a measure of reform, the
Mandate Government of Palestine began to apply an Ordinance for the "Commutation of Tithes," this tax in effect being a fixed aggregate amount paid annually. It was related to the average amount of tithe (tax) that had been paid by the village during the four years immediately preceding the application of the Ordinance to it. In the
1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Bayt Nattif had a population of 1,112, all Muslims, increasing in the
1931 census to 1,649, still all Muslim, in a total of 329 houses (which figure includes houses built in the nearby ruin,
Khirbet Umm al-Ra’us). In 1927,
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi reported local traditions indicating that families of Jewish descent resided in Bayt Nattif. Locals said they converted to Islam around five hundred years earlier. In 1926, some 259
dunums (61.77 acres) of land near Beit Nattif were designated as "Jabal es-Sira
Forest Reserve no. 73," held by the State. By the
1945 statistics, the population had increased to 2,150 Muslims. In 1944/45, a total of 20,149
dunums were allocated to cereal grains in the adjacent lowlands; 688 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, while 162 dunams were built-up (urban) areas.
1948 war and depopulation In the proposed 1947
UN Partition Plan, it was designated as part of the
Arab state. As hostilities broke out in the wake of the publication of the plan, Yohanan Reiner and Fritz Eisenstadt, military advisors of
David Ben-Gurion proposed, on December 18, 1947, that any Arab attack be met with a decisive blow, consisting of the "destruction of the place or chasing out the inhabitants and taking their place." Such proposals were mulled and shelved - one participant likening such proposals to the destruction of
Lidice - but in January 1948, a Jerusalem District HQ document entitled "Lines of Planning for Area Campaigns for the Month of February 1948," foresaw taking steps to secure the
Jerusalem-Tel Aviv route. In this document one measure consisted of "the destruction of villages or objects dominating our settlements or threatening our lines of transportation," and among the objectives of the plan the destruction of the southern bloc of Beit Nattif was envisaged. The official Jewish account (The "History of
Haganah") alleges that the village of Bayt Nattif took part in the killing of thirty-five Jewish fighters (see the
Convoy of 35, the "Lamed-Heh") who were
en route with supplies to the besieged block of
kibbutzim of
Gush Etzion, on January 16, 1948. However, reports from
The New York Times correspondent indicate that the convoy took a wrong turn, and ended up in
Surif. The Arab version is that the convoy had attacked Surif deliberately, and had held it for an hour before being driven out. After this, the
Haganah mounted a "punitive" attack on Bayt Nattif,
Dayr Aban and
Az-Zakariyya. The Israeli Air Force bombed the area of Bayt Nattif on October 19, 1948, which started panic flights from Bayt Nattif and
Bayt Jibrin. Bayt Nattif was depopulated during the
1948 Arab-Israeli War on October 21, 1948 under
Operation Ha-Har, by the Fourth Battalion of the
Har'el Brigade. There are conflicting reports about its conquest, one
Palmach report says that the villagers "fled for their lives", while a Haganah report says that the village was occupied "after some light resistance." There are also conflicting reports about which other villages were destroyed with it; one report says that
Dayr Aban was destroyed with it, while another report says that
Dayr al-Hawa was destroyed with it. File:Bayt Nattif i.jpg|Harel Brigade clearing Bayt Nattif. 1948 File:Harel in Bayt Nattif.jpg|5th Battalion, Harel Brigade in Bayt Nattif, 1948 File:Bayt Nattif 1948.jpg|Houses being demolished by the
Harel Brigade, Bayt Nattif, 1948 File:Bayt Nattif ii.jpg|Bayt Nattif during demolition by the Harel Brigade, 1948 File:Bayt Nattif.jpg|Members of the Yiftach Brigade in Bayt Nattif, 1948
Israel (since 1948) Netiv HaLamed-Heh was built on village land in 1949, while
Aviezer and
Neve Michael were built on village land in 1958. between Israel and
Jordan, until such time that the agreement was dissolved in 1967. Today, the land that once was the site of Bayt Nattif comprises what is now called The Forest of the Thirty-Five () and is maintained by the
Jewish National Fund. Erik Ader, former Dutch ambassador to Norway, whose father Bastiaan Jan Ader is memorialized in the forest as one of the
Righteous Among the Nations for saving 200 Jews from
the Holocaust, has asked that his father's name be removed as a protest against what Ader called "the
ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians. ==Archaeological exploration==