Presently much of the villagers' traditional land, springs, gardens with olive and fig trees, near the Israeli settlement of Nachliel cannot be accessed, because their way is barred by Israeli soldiers or settlers, often with dogs.[4]
Abel, Klein and Safrai all identified Beitillu with Ayyalon, a place mentioned in Midrash Vayisau.[6] Yoel Elitzur asserts that the name Beitillu may be derived from "Bethel", the name of several Israelite settlements of the Iron Age, including the well-known Bethel in Benjamin and another one listed in Judah. He proposed that Beitillu might be the site of Bethel in Mount Ephraim, which the Book of Judges (4:5) mentions as being close to the Palm of Deborah.[7]
Prawer and Benvenisti associated Beitillu with a medieval site bearing the same name, which, according to Mayer, belonged to the monastery of Mons Gaudii (Nebi Samwil).[6]
Ottoman era
Beitillu appeared in the 1596 Ottomantax registers as Bayt Illu, in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 30 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees, vineyards and fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 14,500 Akçe.[8]
In 1838 Beit Ello was noted as Muslim village in the Beni Harith district, north of Jerusalem.[9][10]
French explorer Victor Guérin visited Beit-Illou in 1870, and he estimated that the village had about 800 inhabitants. He also noted that it had "magnificent trees" to the north.[11] Guérin´s population estimate fits well with an official Ottoman village list from about 1870, which showed that Beit Oula had 100 houses and a population of 430, although it only counted the men.[12][13]
In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Beit Ello as a "village of moderate size on high ground, among olives, with a well to the south-east, and a spring and a tank on the north-east".[14]
In 1896 the population of Bet Illo was estimated to be about 588 persons.[15]
In the 1945 statistics the population of Beitillu was 490 Muslims,[18] with 13,409 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[19] 5,825 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 1,681 dunams for cereals,[20] while 58 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[21]
Beitillu came under Israeli occupation after the 1967 Six-Day War. The population in the 1967 census conducted by the Israeli authorities was 848, of whom 174 originated from the Israeli territory.[23]
Much of the villagers' traditional land, springs, gardens with olive and fig trees, near the Israeli settlement of Nachliel cannot be accessed, according to Amira Hass, because their way is barred by soldiers or settlers, often with dogs:-
This has been going on for years. Gradually, ever-expanding rings of grazing land and rows of groves have become inaccessible to residents of the Beitillu and Deir Ammar villages.'[4]
One villager complained:
“I have 200 olive trees, 500 fig trees and 300 vines there. I can’t even pick a single fig,” stated a Palestinian farmer who looks older than his age; he spoke without cynicism, and with much pain. “They aren’t killing me, but they are killing my heart.”[4]
In February 2011, three Beitillu houses were vandalised by anonymous graffiti artists who painted slogans like 'Muhammad is a pig' on their walls, probably as a price tag policy retaliation for the forced evacuation of a settler outpost near Kiryat Arba.[25]
^ abcFinkelstein, Israel; Lederman, Zvi; Bunimovitz, Shlomo (1997). Finkelstein, Israel; Lederman, Zvi (eds.). Highlands of Many Cultures. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University Publications Section. p. 374. ISBN965-440-007-3.
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