[7][8][9] According to one theory, Modi'in occupied the site of Khirbet er-Râs, directly to the south-east of the modern village.

[3] Based on the archeological data, as well as the site's location, Raviv suggests that it was a Jewish settlement during the Early Roman period.

Seven triangular[dubious – discuss] tombs were found, corresponding with the description of the first-century Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, who wrote that the family’s seven pyramid-shaped graves were erected in the same place.

[6] Al-Midya was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in the 1596 tax−records it appeared under the name of Midya as-Sarqiyya as being in the Nahiya of Ramla, part of Gaza Sanjak.

[18][19] In 1882, PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Midieh as being a village of a "good size", with houses either built of adobe or stone.

[28] In 1986, when the population amounted to 570 people, largely dependent on agriculture, the villagers were woken at 3:00 a.m. by the arrival of Israeli military vehicles and were informed that a curfew would be in place until 9 pm that day.

Throughout the day, roughly 1,000 Israelis, soldiers protecting the operation and workers from the Israeli Lands Administration and Nature Reserve authorities who drove bulldozers to grade a road down a steep hillside to a rough track running below it, and chainsawed an olive grove extending over 1,100 dunams, destroying 3,000 trees.

When the devastation was reported, Israel said the razing was to block Al-Midya from encroaching on Israeli state land, claiming that the olive trees were less than five years old, and planted to secure title to the area.