Bani Zeid al-Gharbia
municipality in Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate
Bani Zeid (Arabic: بني زيد) is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of Palestine, in the north-central West Bank, located 27 kilometers (17 mi) northwest of Ramallah, about 45 kilometers northwest of Jerusalem and about 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) southwest of Salfit. A town of over 6,000 inhabitants, Bani Zeid was founded when the villages of Deir Ghassaneh and Beit Rima merged to form a municipality in 1966 during Jordanian rule over the West Bank.
Bani Zeid owes its name to the Arab tribe that was granted the area as a fief by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in the 12th century for having served in the Muslim army during the first Crusades. It was settled by members of the tribe alongside the native fellahin ("peasantry") during the reign of Mamluk sultan Baibars in the mid-13th century. During Ottoman rule, the area of Bani Zeid served as a sheikdom with some administrative capacity. It consisted of several villages with Deir Ghassaneh as its center. During that time, the Barghouti family dominated the sheikdom.
During the 1936–39 Arab revolt against British Mandate rule, Deir Ghassaneh primarily served as the scene of rebel gatherings and British military raids. In 1967, Bani Zeid was occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War, but was later transferred to full Palestinian security and administrative control in 2000. The next year it became the first Palestinian-controlled town to be known as the site of major operation by Israeli forces during the Second Intifada.
The public source identifies “Bani Zeid al-Gharbia” as municipality in Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bani, Zeid and al-Gharbia.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4855730. Authority coordinates are 32.041, 35.102. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1936, 1967 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bani Zeid al-Gharbia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.