It paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on a number of crops, including wheat and barley, as well as on goats, beehives and vineyards; a total of 7,900 akçe.

[16] During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area of Bayt Daras experienced a significant process of settlement decline due to nomadic pressures on local communities.

[20] In the 1882 PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP), the village of Bayt Daras was described as being surrounded by gardens and olive groves, and it was bordered to the north by a pond.

[25] One quarter of the land was owned by a single family, one of whose survivors still has their title deeds in her keeping in a Khan Younis refugee camp.

[29] According to Palestinian accounts, Beit Daras villagers lived peacefully with residents of Tabiyya, a walled kubaniya (Jewish colony) on its borders.

Jews brought their produce, spoke the dialect fluently and their local doctor, Tsemeh, would care for Beit Daras' sick people when called on for assistance.

The only anomaly was the occasional sound of gunfire practice in Tabiyya which soldiers from the British army appeared to be training their neighbours in the use of arms.

[31] Bayt Daras was targeted to be surrounded, to have the villagers surrender and hand over their arms, and if this order was resisted, it was to be mortared, stormed and 'dealt with in the manner of scorched earth'.

[31] According to the memoirs of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the empty village was reoccupied by Sudanese forces in June, but they left after a signaling error caused them to be shelled by their own side.

"[37] A woman's thob (loose fitting robe with sleeves) dated to about 1930 from the village of Beit Daras is part of the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) collection at Santa Fe.