[19][20] Passing by, in 1871, Charles Warren described travelling in the area: "We passed through olive groves and gardens past Zernuka, until crossing over some undulating hills we came across the village Akir..."[21] In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Zarnuqa as a large adobe village "with cactus hedges around it and wells in the gardens.

[23] In March 1892, a dispute erupted between the shepherds of Zarnuqa and the Jewish farmers of the newly established moshava of Rehovot, which was finally resolved in the courts.

[16] In 1913, a violent clash, which according to the Jewish side was sparked by the theft of grapes from a Rishon LeZion vineyard, resulted in the deaths of two Jews from Rehovot and an Arab of Zarnuqa.

[28] In 1934, Zionist writer Ze'ev Smilansky attributed the modernisation of the village to its proximity to Rehovot and land sales to Jews by both effendis and fellahin.

Women, children and the elderly were evacuated to the nearby village of Yibna, leaving the Shurbajis and several dozen armed men from other clans.

One account in Al HaMishmar described how a soldier fired with a Sten gun at three people (one old man, old woman and a child) and how the villagers were taken out from the houses and had to stay in the sun, in hunger and thirst, until they surrendered the weapons they claimed they did not have.

[32] The family of the Shaqaqi brothers, Fathi (one of the founders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the political scientist Khalil Ibrahim, was from Zarnuqa.

[33] They fled in the face of rumours of massacres of Palestinians by Yishuv troops and expected to return after the hostilities ended.

[5] Haidar Eid, Associate Professor at al-Aqsa University in Gaza, states that his parent were evicted from the village by members of the Haganah and Stern gang who told them: "Leave your homes or we will kill and rape you".