According to a local tradition, it was named after the Yemeni home of the Qada'a tribe who settled here in the early Islamic period.

[8] In the 1945 statistics, there were 1,620 Muslims and 1,760 Jews estimated to live in Wadi Hunayn and Ness Ziona together.

[1][9] Its main export was citrus, grown in orchards that were irrigated by numerous water wells dug around the village.

Wadi Hunayn was mostly destroyed by the Haganah forces, who blew up all the buildings near the main road as well as the local mosque's minaret, since the village was used as a launching point for Arab attacks on Jewish convoys to Jerusalem.

Only a few of the original houses of the village remained, while the mosque (built in 1934) was converted into a synagogue by the neighboring Jewish population of Ness Ziona and renamed "Geulat Yisra'el" ("Israel's salvation").