[6] In 1517 the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine, and it appeared in the 1596 tax-records as Zayta Bani 'Amir, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus.

They paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives and a press for olive oil or grape syrup, in addition to occasional revenues and a fixed tax for people of Nablus area; a total of 10,114 akçe.

Situated between Dayr Ghassāna in the south and the present Route 5 in the north, and between Majdal Yābā in the west and Jammā‘īn, Mardā and Kifl Ḥāris in the east, this area served, according to historian Roy Marom, "as a buffer zone between the political-economic-social units of the Jerusalem and the Nablus regions.

On the political level, it suffered from instability due to the migration of the Bedouin tribes and the constant competition among local clans for the right to collect taxes on behalf of the Ottoman authorities.

[11] In 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Zeita as: "a small stone village, on high ground, with a well to the west, and olive groves.