There are two historical centres in Beita; Beita el-Fauqa ("The upper Beita") to the North-East and Beita et-Tahta ("The lower Beita") to the South-West. In Beita el-Fauqa, pottery
sherds from the
Iron Age II/
Persian.
Persian and
Mamluk era have been found, while at Beita et-Tahta sherds from the Iron Age II, Persian,
Roman/
Byzantine,
Byzantine, and Mamluk era have been found.
Ottoman era Beita was incorporated into the
Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of
Palestine, and both in Beita el-Fauqa and Beita et-Tatha sherds from the early Ottoman era have been found. In 1838,
Edward Robinson noted Beita as a "large village", located in the
El-Beitawy district, east of Nablus. In 1882, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine described it as "A large village, with a kind of suburb to the south, near which are ancient
tombs. It is supplied by
wells, and surrounded by olives. It stands upon the hills east of the
Mukhnah plain, and is the capital of the district named from it."
British Mandate era In the
1922 census of Palestine conducted by the
British Mandate authorities, Beita had a population of 883, all
Muslims, increasing at the time of the
1931 census to 1,194, still all Muslim, in 286 houses. In the
1945 statistics Beita had a population of 1,580 Muslims, with 17,542
dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 5,666 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 6,916 used for cereals, while 76 dunams were built-up land.
Jordanian era In the wake of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the
1949 Armistice Agreements, Beita came under
annexed Jordanian rule. At the beginning of 1930s Shaikh Rezeq Abdelrazeq Elyan Open the first school in Beita Al-Tahta and it was names (Beita National School) and the student from beita and around used to come and get education in it. In 1952, Beita opened an elementary school, which served the town and surrounding villages. In 1954, an elementary school for girls only was established and since then, four other schools have been built - including two secondary schools. The Jordanian census of 1961 found 693 inhabitants in
Beita Tahta ("the lower Beita"), while
Beita Fauqa ("the higher Beita") had 1,498 inhabitants; a total of 2,191 inhabitants.
Post-1967 Since the
Six-Day War in 1967, Beita has been under
Israeli occupation. After the
1995 accords, 89% of the village land was classified as
Area B, and the remaining 11% as
Area C. Although the town was considered a
Fatah stronghold, Arab ash-Shurafa, a member of
Hamas, was elected mayor in 2005. Shurafa was arrested by the
IDF, along with
Nablus mayor
Adly Yaish and
Education Minister of the Palestinian National Authority Nasser al-Shaer in 2006 for their membership in Hamas.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict In January 1988, 20 men from Beita and
Huwara, identified by a GSS report after clashes with Israeli troops to have been involved in
stone throwing, were assembled, bound, without their resisting, with plastic handcuffs and had their bones broken by soldiers, and then were abandoned at night in a muddy field. The
International Red Cross made a formal complaint, after local press reports had been ignored. The army did not prosecute the matter initially. Lieutenant-colonel Yehuda Meir was reprimanded, and forced into retirement, with his officer's rank and pension rights intact. He was prosecuted only after the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel made an issue of the matter by appealing to the Supreme Court which ruled that he had to stand trial, which then took place in April 1991. Meir was the local Nablus district commander overseeing the operation, and testified that he had acted under orders directly coming from
Yitzhak Rabin and that when he had objected to bone-smashing, Rabin had replied: "You do the work, I'll take care of the media." His superiors testified that orders were only to use force in pursuit and arrests. The court believed the latter and found that the orders were legal, but that Meir had deviated from instructions. (yellow), Israeli settlements and Israeli-controlled
Area C (magenta and blue) On 10 April 2023, an estimated 15,000- 20,000 ultranationalist settlers, protected by a full battalion (1,000) of IDF soldiers and joined by the Israeli Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir,
Bezalel Smotrich, 7 other ministers, and 20 parliamentarians, staged a march towards Evyatar, reportedly to pressure
the new government under
Benjamin Netanyahu to legalize the outpost. The given reason for their march was to retaliate for the murder of
three members of the Dee family, British settlers, three days earlier, on 7 April, at the
Hamra junction. Beita villagers protesting the march suffered 191 casualties, in large part from tear-gas intoxication. 17 were injured by
rubber bullet shots fired by the army, while two were wounded in the head by gas canisters.
Le Monde reported that journalists covering the event were also targeted, with one wearing a press vest also injured by a rubber bullet. They were accompanied by two guards, both with a reputation for being aggressive Zionists: Roman Aldubi, a 26-year-old known extremist and religious militant banned by the IDF from entering Nablus for 6 months, after he had been convicted of obstruction of justice for hiding a gun used by another settler to kill an 11 year old Palestinian child, 'Aysha Bahash, in her father's bakery, during a stone-throwing incident; and Menahem Ilan (55), the organizer, (Ilan had previously been convicted in 1984 of obstructing justice and destroying evidence in a prior settler killing of a Palestinian girl.) When the settler group sat down to make breakfast near a spring, or a local well, In the IDF investigation, it was determined that Aldubi shot Mussa Saleh in the back at a distance of about 10 yards while the latter was fleeing. In another version, Ilan reprimanded him, and led the hikers away down a riverbed, where one girl was hit in the thigh by a stone and then Aldubi opened fire with Ilan's M-16 shooting Mousa Saleh in the head, killing him Aldubi later said the man had tried to grab his rifle, According to one report, Aldubi while falling sprayed his Uzi machine gun and killed Hatem Fayez Ahmad Al-Jaber and severely wounded several other villagers. The IDF investigation found that instead Aldubi squeezed off several shots as he turned around after being hit by a rock, and then fired again when one of the villagers tried to wrest his rifle from him. Israeli prime minister
Yitzhak Shamir attended her funeral where cries of revenge were uttered and where Knesset member
Haim Druckman declared that "the village of Beita must be wiped off the face of the earth," a remark that was met with "amens" from the crowd. Despite knowing from the start who was responsible, the Israeli first bulldozed six homes and then, after the report indicated Porat had not been killed by Palestinians, destroyed another eight
Aftermath and Punishment As soon as the Israeli army intervened, they shot dead a villager who they said was trying to run away. Within 48 hours of the incident, Major General
Amram Mitzna, who had cordoned off the village he said to protect the residents and who declared no reprisals would be taken, interrogated all males between 16 and 60, and made hundreds of the villagers stand handcuffed and blindfolded all night. They said later they had been kicked, beaten and menaced until satisfactory testimonies had been given. IDF bulldozers uprooted dozens of olive trees and an almond grove nearby, which actually belonged to another Palestinian village. The demolitions were ordered while the owners of 13 of the homes had not been charged with any crime. The incident radicalized the village. One local some months later was reported as saying: In May 1989, a
Jaffa military court handed down stiff sentences to five of the members of the village of Beita suspected of
throwing stones at Jewish hikers. The person convicted of the most serious crime got an eight-year sentence, of which 3 were to be served. Two others sentenced to five-year terms were to serve 21 months, a fourth 18 months and the fifth two years. A further 11 Beitans were slated to stand trial later on the same charges. On 14 April 1991 an Elon Moreh settler, Pinhas Assayag (22), murdered a Beita resident,
Jamil Dweikat (50). Arrested on 19 June 1991, he also confessed to killing a 22 year old shepherd,
Radi a-Ouna from the nearby village of '
Azmut earlier in January of that year. After an investigation, he was committed to an Israeli mental hospital. In June, 2021, Israel destroyed $100,000 worth of vegetables in Beita by firing teargas at a vegetable storage unit. In the same month the new government of
Naphtali Bennett reached an agreement with the settlers to evacuate in exchange for a promise to maintain the infrastructure and convert the outpost into a
yeshiva. On August 14, 2021, Beita protesters erected a wooden
star of David in the center of which was a swastika, set fire to the structure and highlighted the event with a video on social media. File:Beita protest 1.jpg|Protest in Beita against Evyatar outpost. 3 Sept 2021 File:ירי גז מדמיע ביתא יולי.jpg|tear gas shut on protesters in Beita, July 2021 File:ילד פגוע מגז מדמיע ביתא 2 יולי 2021.jpg|Child hurt from tear gas during protest against Evyatar outpost, July 2021 File:Discharge of tear gas from a drone.jpg|Tear gas from drone on protesters, Beita September 2021 File:Road destruction Beita 2.jpg|A road destroyed by an Israeli army bulldozer to prevent protesters from approaching Evyatar outpost. Beita, January 2022 Those killed are • On 14 May, Dr.
Issa Barham, a legal scholar, expert in international law, who worked for the prosecutor's office in
Salfit, was shot dead after he responded to a call from the mosque for volunteers to help evacuate those wounded by Israeli army fire during a Friday demonstration. Ambulances couldn't cope, and he drove his Hyundai Tucson SUV to the scene. According to Palestinians present, as he was walking over to a group of wounded, an Israeli sniper knelt down, aimed and a single shot rang out. Barham died of a gunshot wound to the stomach. • Zakaria Hamayel (26) a schoolteacher of Arabic, was shot dead while looking for a place to say his afternoon prayers in a break from a demonstration against the illegal settlement. A medic wearing the characteristic phosphorescent vest was shot in the thigh as he tried to assist Hamayel. • On 6 August,
Imad Duikat (38), a father of five, was shot dead with a .22 bullet to the chest while reportedly sipping water from a disposable cup near an ambulance at the protest site. On the same afternoon, 6 other Beita residents were hit by live fire and over 100 were injured by tear gas and rubber-tipped metal bullets. The IDF said stones were thrown and tires burnt in what they termed a 'violent demonstration'. == Demography ==