Kharbatha al-Misbah

Kharbatha al-Misbah (خربثا المصباح) is a Palestinian town in the central West Bank, located 12.5 km west of Ramallah in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 6,366 in 2017. It has a total land area of 4,431 dunams, of which 644 are built-up areas and the remainder agricultural lands and forests.

Location
Kharbatha al Misbah is located 12.5 km west of Ramallah. It is bordered by Beit Ur al Fauqa to the east, Beit Ur at Tahta to the north, Beit Sira to the west, and Beit Liqya to the south.

Etymology
Ḫarbatā /Ḫarbata/ is an Aramaic toponym meaning “the ruin”. The second part of the name means "lamp".

History
In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim  village called Khurbata in the Lydda administrative region.

In 1863, Victor Guérin found the village to have 400 inhabitants, along with ruins identified in local tradition as the remains of a Christian church. He further noted five or six cisterns, and ancient tombs. Guérin thought that this was an ancient place that was founded on a Hebrew settlement whose original name had been lost.

Socin found from an official Ottoman village list from about 1870 that the village, called Charabta, had a population of 194, with a total of 71  houses, though the population count included only men. Hartmann found that Charabta had 78 houses.

In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described the village, then called Khurbetha ibn es Seba, as "a small village on a ridge, with a well to the east."

British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kherbet al-Mesbah had a population of 369, all Muslim. In the 1931 census it had increased to a population of 488, still all Muslim, in 121 inhabited houses.

In the 1945 statistics, the population of Khirbat el Misbah was 600, all Muslims, who owned 4,438 dunams of land  according to an official land and population survey. 1,026 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,133 used for cereals, while 25 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

Jordanian era
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Kharbatha al-Misbah came under Jordanian rule.

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 942 inhabitants in ''Kh. Misbah''.

There are two mosques in the town: Omri Mosque and al-Kawthar Mosque. The former was built atop the ruins of an ancient church and was renovated in 1965. Within the town, still lay Ancient Roman cemeteries. It has been governed by a village council.

1967-present
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Kharbatha al-Misbah has been under Israeli occupation.

After the 1995 accords, 19% of village land was classified as Area B, while the remaining 81% was classified as Area C. Israel has confiscated 61 dunams of village land in order to build the Israeli settlement of Beit Horon.