Dayr al Hawa

History

Coins and ceramics from the Byzantine era have been found here.

Ottoman era

In 1838, Edward Robinson called it a "lofty" village, on the brink of a valley, Victor Guérin, visiting the village in 1863, wrote that Dayr al-Hawa "probably owes its name, monastery of the wind, to its high position," as it was situated on a steep mountain overlooking the Soreq valley, rising some 2,275 feet (700 meters) above sea level.

An Ottoman village list from around 1870 showed that “Der el-Hawa” had 32 houses and a population of 103, though the population count included men, only.

In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described it as "a village standing high, on a knoll rising from a high ridge, with a deep valley to the north. It has several high houses in it. On the west is a good spring. The ground is covered with brushwood all round the place."

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted i by the British Mandate authorities, Bayt 'Itab had a population of 38 residents; all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 47 inhabitants, in 11 houses.

In 1945 the village had a population of 60 Muslims, with a total of 5,907 dunums of land. Of this, 58 dunams were for irrigable land or plantations, 1,565 for cereals, while 4 dunams were built-up land.

A mosque was located in the western part of the village and there was a shrine for a local sage known as al-Shaykh Sulayman. Near the ruins of the old village now stands the Israeli moshav, Nes Harim, however, it is not on village land. (It is on the land of Bayt 'Itab.)

During the 1948 it was defended by the local militia and the Egyptian Army/Muslim Brotherhood Battalion.