Beit Zayit

Beit Zayit lies at the fringe of Jerusalem Forest Park, in the hills west of Jerusalem.[1] Together with Orah and Aminadav, it is one of three moshavim adjoining the city’s municipal boundary, all within the Matte Yehuda Regional Council.[3] In 2008, the council encompassed 41 moshavim and had 22,800 residents; these figures describe the council rather than Beit Zayit alone.[3]

The village combines the agricultural framework of a moshav with proximity to Jerusalem.[1][3] In this cooperative settlement model, member families own plots primarily intended for agriculture, although residents may also include people who are not cooperative members.[3] Beit Zayit’s families have small agricultural plots, some of which were later made available for an initiative combining farming and work with teenagers.[5]

Beit Zayit was founded in 1949 by immigrants from Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary; immigrants from Egypt settled there later.[1] The official locality list also records 1949 as the year of Jewish settlement at Bet Zayit, an alternative rendering of the village’s name.[6] Its name refers to the olive groves on the nearby slopes.[1]

The modern village is distinct from the place of the same name mentioned in the Book of Maccabees, which lay farther north.[4] That ancient namesake has been tentatively identified with Bir al-Zayt, north of Ramallah.[4]

An archival collection titled “Beit Zayit” is listed under the Jewish community in Palestine/Israel, in the category covering organizations, institutions, and localities.[7] The entry carries the identifier JK223 and the date 2009, is marked “not scanned,” and records its quantity as “<0.2.”[7]

Beit Zayit had 468 inhabitants in 1970, 840 in the mid-1990s, and 1,110 by 2002.[1] A population table records 1,191 inhabitants on December 31, 2004.[2] The official population figure for 2020 was 1,683.[8]

In the official locality classification, Bet Zayit has locality code 710 and is assigned to the Matte Yehuda Regional Council and sub-district 11.[8]

The moshav’s agricultural economy was based on fruit orchards, vegetables, poultry, and other farm products.[1] It also operated a swimming pool and a guest house.[1]

A third-generation resident developed an initiative using otherwise unused agricultural plots to involve teenagers in farming.[5] Permission was initially obtained to use about an acre, and the initiative eventually gathered approximately three acres.[5] The founder described the rocky soil as unsuitable for vegetable growing and joked that agriculture in Jerusalem was “the most stupid thing you can do.”[5]

More broadly, Israeli moshavim underwent demographic and land-use changes as government policy permitted formerly agricultural land to be used for housing, commerce, and industry.[3] This was a general development across moshavim, rather than a documented account of every such change in Beit Zayit.[3]

In 2017, Beit Zayit was among seven communities excluded from parts of Matte Yehuda’s proposed outline plan.[9] The planning rationale placed these communities within an urban fabric under the national planning framework TAMA 35, along the built-up continuum of Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh.[9] A third housing unit on a farmstead was consequently considered irrelevant because little agriculture remained.[9] Matte Yehuda disputed that characterization, arguing that the communities were moshavim like its other settlements and differed principally in their proximity to cities.[9]

In 2018, the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee reversed the exclusion after Matte Yehuda refused to advance the plan without all its communities.[10] Beit Zayit, Ora, Aminadav, and Kibbutz Ramat Rachel had initially been treated as land reserves for Jerusalem’s expansion.[10] The compromise restored the excluded communities to the plan but did not grant them the same additional land for agricultural structures or tourism-development rights available to other communities covered by it.[10]

The reservoir and dam on Beit Zayit’s western side lie in the Nahal Sorek channel.[11] Built in the 1950s, the reservoir was one of the major water projects of its time, intended to collect winter floodwater and allow it to seep gradually into underground water supplies.[12] After construction, incorrect elevation differences were found to cause the water to flow in the opposite direction from that intended.[12] The reservoir and dam subsequently became a scenic destination, particularly after rain.[12]

Seasonal conditions at the reservoir can leave thick mud that makes swimming and rescue searches dangerous.[13] During one rescue operation, mud was reported to reach ten meters deep in places, and a fire department official warned against entering unauthorized bodies of water without lifeguards.[13]

Beit Zayit also contains a site of preserved three-toed dinosaur footprints.[11] The tracks were discovered in the 1960s during a search for a missing child, when a geology student named Motke who had joined the search found the impressions.[14] The preserved impressions have been described as unusually rare, with few parallels worldwide.[14] The animals crossed soft ground at a location that was then a seashore, and further tracks may remain undiscovered nearby.[14]

The footprints are preserved in limestone dated to approximately 100–110 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous, and clearly show three forward-pointing toes.[15] The proposed track-maker was an ostrich-like theropod, with an estimated stride slightly under 1.5 meters and a height of about 2.5 meters.[15] An earlier identification proposed by Professor Avnimelech assigned the tracks to Struthiomimus and described an ostrich-like animal weighing about 150 kilograms and measuring approximately four meters long.[11]