page_title: Zayta, Hebron
section_title: British Mandate era
hierarchical_section_title: Zayta, Hebron / History / British Mandate era
caption_attribution_description: English: Beit Jibrin 1945 1:250,000
context_page_description: Zayta was a Palestinian Arab village in the Hebron Subdistrict in Mandate Palestine. During Crusader rule in Palestine, the village is mentioned as forming part of the landholdings of the Order of St. John. At the time of the rule of the Ottoman Empire, according to the 1596 census, Zayta had a population of 165. Mentioned by Western travellers to the region in the 19th century, it is described by one as, "a picturesque Arab village"; by 1945, its population was 330 inhabitants.
  Zayta was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War between July 17–18, 1948. Its inhabitants became refugees, ending up the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All that remains of the village structures is the well that served as its main water source.
context_section_description: In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Zaita had a population of 139 inhabitants, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 234, still all Muslim, in a total of 44 inhabited houses.
  According to a 1930 report, the water supply system at Zayta was improved, as it had been "insanitary and malarious." The villagers moved 1.5 km north during this period, to a new village which was laid out in a northeast-southeast direction. The houses were built of mud, wood, and cane. Artesian wells dug between the wadi and the village served as the main source of drinking water, while another well lay to the north.
  The villagers worked mainly in rainfed agriculture and stock raising, specializing in goats and sheep. They cultivated grain on large part of their land, and utilized the rest as grazing land for their animals.
  In the 1940s, an Arab landowner who owned 1,200 dunams (1.2 km²; 0.46 sq mi) in Zeita, part of which was mortgaged to the bank, contacted Jewish purchasers to sell, as he was fearful of losing his holdings in other areas. By the 1945 statistics, of the 10,490 dunams (10.49 km²; 4.05 sq mi) that made up the village of Zayta, 1,273 dunams (1.273 km²; 0.492 sq mi) were owned by Jews, 3,127 dunams (3.127 km²; 1.207 sq mi) were owned by Arabs, and the remaining 6,090 dunams (6.09 km²; 2.35 sq mi) were public lands held by the village in common. At this time, the village population was estimated at 330 Muslims. In 1944/45 a total of 10,105 dunums of village land was allocated to cereals, while 33 dunams were classified urban, public areas.
caption: Zayta 1948 1:250,000 (top left quadrant)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image Software": "Photos 1.5", "Image DateTime": "2019:10:05 10:50:24", "Image ExifOffset": "134", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:10:05 10:50:24", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:10:05 10:50:24", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "988", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "606"}