Beit Izza, the house of Izza, from personal name [4]
Beit Ijza (Arabic: بيت إجزا, also spelled Bayt Ijza); is a village in the Jerusalem Governorate in the central West Bank with an area of 2,526 dunams. Located approximately six miles north of Jerusalem, it had a population of 698 in 2007 and 854 by 2017.[2][5]
Location
Beit Ijza is located 11 kilometers (6.8 mi) north-west of Jerusalem, bordered by Al Jib to the east and Al Jib lands to the north, Beit Duqqu to the west, and Biddu to the south.[1]
History
Ottoman era
Beit Izja has its earliest mention in a record from 1538/9, where it was listed as a mazra'a (farm).[6] In 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the nahiya of Al-Quds in the liwa of Al-Quds under the name of Bayt Iza. It had a population of 6 household;[7] who were all Muslims. They paid a fixed Ziamet tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, vineyards, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 2,500 akçe.[7]
In 1738 Richard Pococke named it Beteser, seeing it "on the hill to the east of the valley".[8]
In 1838, it was described as a Muslim village, located in the Beni Malik area, west of Jerusalem.[9]
In 1883 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Beit Izza as: "a village of moderate size on a hill with a spring at some distance to the west."[10]
In the 1945 statistics Beit Ijza had a population of 70 Muslims,[13] with a total of 2,550 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[14] Of this, Arabs used 122 dunams for plantations and irrigable land, 922 for cereals,[15] while 8 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[16]
Under the 1995 Oslo II Accord, 6.7% of the total village area was classified as Area B, and the remaining 93.3% classified as Area C, under full Israeli control. Israel has confiscated land in Beit Ijza for settlements, including Giv'at Ze'ev and Giv'on Ha'hadasha. In addition, the separation wall extends onto Beit Ijza land, leaving 980 dunums, (or 38.1% of the total village's area), behind the wall, on the Israeli side. The Palestinian owners of the land must rely on Israeli permission to access their land. Permission is only granted to the property owner, often elderly people, leaving them unable to hire help to work the land.[18] One family in Beit Ijza lives with walls on all sides of its property due to extensive land expropriations by Israel.[19]
^Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 361
