Ceramics from the Byzantine era have been found here.[4]
Ottoman era
Rafat, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in the census of 1596, the village was noted in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. The population was 27 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on various agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and/or beehives, in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 3,300 akçe.[5][6]
In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim village in the Jerusalem District.[7][8][9] During this time, residents from Rafat settled Danyal near al-Ramla, establishing it as a dependency – or satellite village – of their home village.[10]
In 1863 Victor Guérin found Rafat to have one hundred and twenty inhabitants, and was located on a mound. It had mosque is dedicated to Sheikh Ahmed. He further noted that in some houses several stones looked of an ancient appearance. In one house he found a fragment of a broken column.[11]
An Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that rafat had 35 houses and a population of 100, though the population count included men, only.[12][13]
In the 1945 statistics, Rafat had a population of 280 Muslims,[18] and a land area of 3,777 dunams.[19] Of this, 252 dunams were designated for plantations and irrigable land, 1,965 dunams were for cereals,[20] while 21 dunams were built-up.[21]
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Rafat has been under Israeli occupation. The population in the 1967 census conducted by the Israeli authorities was 499, 75% of whom originated from the Israeli territory.[23]
According to ARIJ Israel has confiscated 287 dunums of land (8.5% of the total area of the village) for the construction of Camp Ofer (later Ofer Prison). More lands have been confiscated from Rafat for the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier. 637 dunums, which comprises 18.7% of the village’s total area, is isolated behind the wall, on the Israeli side.[24]
