In 1596 Ya'bad appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as being in the nahiya of Jabal Sami in the liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 62 households, all Muslim. They paid a tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, occasional revenues, goats and beehives, and a press for olives or grapes; a total of 18,085 akçe. Half of the revenue went to a waqf dedicated to Halil ar-Rahman. In 1694 CE, Abd el-Ghani en-Nabulsi, a Moslem traveler, passed by Ya'bad and noted it as “a village between Jenin and Arrabeh”. In the 17th-18th centuries, Ya'bad was well known for producing the bestcheese in Jabal Nablus. Politically it was ruled by the Qadri clan allied with the powerful Abd al-Hadi clan. In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim village, Ya'bud, located in the esh–Sha'rawiyeh esh–Shurkiyeh District. In 1870 Victor Guérin noted Ya'bad situated "on a hill", while in the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine , Yabid was described as "a good-sized stone village, with some Christian families and two factions of Moslems, called respectively the 'Abd el Hady and the Beni Tokan, living in separate quarters. The village stands on a ridge, with a well to the south and a small separate quarter on the east, in which is a small Mukam."
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yabid had a population of 1,733, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to a population of 2,383, still all Muslim, in 418 occupied houses. In 1935 the prominent Arab resistance leader Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and a few of his men were killed in a cave near Ya'bad by British forces. In the 1945 statistics the population of Ya'bad was 3,480, all Muslims, with 37,805 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. 6,035 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 9,955 dunams for cereals, while 92 dunams were built-up land.
Since the 1967 Six-Day War, Ya'bad has been under Israeli occupation. The population of Ya'bad in the 1967 census conducted by Israel was 4,857, of whom 581 originated from the Israeli territory. In May 1985 five village women set up a Women's Work Committee which opened a kindergarten for 60 children and started a sewing course with 32 young women. A major charcoal mine is located near Ya'bad and most of its workers come from the town. Since the establishment of "closed-off areas" and the construction of the West Bank Barrier in the northern West Bank, Ya'bad and surrounding cities and towns have seen an increase in unemployment which reached to 88% in 2006. The annual average income has dropped "dramatically" by one-third according to the World Bank.
