Beit Safafa

Beit Safafa (Arabic: بيت صفافا‎‎, Hebrew: בית צפפה‎‎; lit. "House of the summer-houses or narrow benches") is an Arab town along the Green Line, with the vast majority of its territory in East Jerusalem and some northern parts in West Jerusalem.

Since the 1949 agreements, the neighborhood has been divided by the Green Line. Until 1967, the East Jerusalem part remained under Jordanian rule while the northern parts became under Israeli rule. Beit Safafa covers an area of 1,577 dunams. After the Six-Day War, the two sides were reunited. In 2010, Beit Safafa had a population of 5,463.

During the Crusader era, the village was known as Bethafava or Bethsaphase.Baldwin I granted the village as a fief to the Knights Hospitallers sometime before September 1110. A tower in the village is dated to the Crusader period.

The village was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Quds of the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 41 Muslim households and paid taxes on wheat, barley, olives, grapes or fruit trees, and goats or beehives. French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village in 1863, and described it as a village with some thirty houses, some solidly built and very old. In the 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund's "Survey of Western Palestine", the village was described as "a small village in flat open ground, with a well to the north".

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