West of the central anticline, its surface and sub-aquifers form one of the recharging feeders of the Yarqon Tanninim basin, 1,400 square kilometres (540 sq mi) of which lie east of the Green Line.

[6] The Wadi Qana area of the West Bank portion of the drainage basin encompasses approximately 229 square kilometres (88 sq mi).

[7] In 1922, the French biblical scholar and geographer Félix-Marie Abel identified stone structures in Wadi Qana, some consisting of piles seven courses high, as megaliths forming a dolmen necropolis (nécropole dolménique).

By the fourth millennium, human use of the wadi is attested by prehistorical artifacts found in a karstic cave 25 km east of the Mediterranean[10][11] on the western fringe of the Samaria hills.

Three strata were brought to light, indicating it had undergone successive occupation from the 6th millennium BCE, beginning with the Yarmukian culture, through to the Chalcolithic, down to the early Bronze Age.

[10] The Chalcolithic remains were particularly rich, with a cemetery yielding up, aside from ossuaries, pithoi, churns and varieties of creamware, 8 ring-shaped objects, mostly cast from electrum, with a 70% gold and 30% silver content.

A further significant feature from the find was that the person buried with such objects, the latter suggestive of status symbols,[16] probably had high rank, which would mean that social development in the area in that period was more advanced than hitherto thought.

It has been suggested that this dispersion may have had its roots in a strong blood feud, and that the people of Zakur moved first to Kafr Thulth and, finding no good land available there, then spread out to dwell in five hamlets adjacent to Wadi Qana.

[25] The West Bank part of Wadi Qana, surrounded by Palestinian villages such as Deir Istiya, Qarawat Bani Hassan, Biddya, Sanniriya, Kafr Thulth, Azzun, Kafr Laqif and Jinsafut,[26] runs through a fertile valley and constituted one of the most notable natural attractions in terms of the beauty of its landscape, given its abundance of springs, extent of its well-watered land, and plentiful trees.

[26] The area has traditionally furnished local Palestinians with important land for grazing livestock, harvesting agricultural products, especially citrus, and for leisure (bathing).

[4] It afforded rich grazing for flocks, carrying an estimated 50,000 sheep down to the early 1980s, compared to the 3,000 Palestinians still manage to tend in the wadi in recent years (2017).

[28] In the 1970s Israel began deep drilling in the wadi area with its rich groundwater resources and one consequence was that many springs and wells used by local Palestinians dried up.

[32] After the Oslo Accords (1993 and 1995) and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PA), the central sector of the wadi, east of Qalqiliya, became part of Area C, and was mostly owned by the villagers of Deir Istiya.

[4][33] Palestinian villages nearby add to this pollution by using cesspits whose contents are then randomly discharged into open areas and valleys near the wadi's springs.

[4] That part of the wadi's village lands lying in Area C may not, under the Israeli dispensation, be used for Palestinian commercial or industrial projects: The one remaining option of using it for agricultural purposes – planting olive trees, for example, is, however, hampered by severe restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on the grounds that such activities damage the wadi's natural flora, the topography, and the character of the habitat.

[41][4] According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has destroyed Palestinian irrigation channels in the Wadi Qana area "under the pretext of environmental protection".