The village was located on Wadi Yubla (also called Wadi al-'Ashsha), at the point where the wadi entered the Jordan Valley area. Both the Baysan-Jericho highway and the railway line leading from Haifa to Samakh (and ultimately to the Hijaz railway) passed directly to the east. The village, which was classified as a hamlet by the Palestine Index Gazetteer, had a rectangular plan. Its adobe houses and narrow alleys ran from northwest to southeast, away from the wadi; they may have been laid out in this pattern so that they would not be flooded in winter.
The village's location, the richness of its soil, and its abundant water supplies made it an early target for takeover by the Zionists during the British Mandate. Zab'a's inhabitants, all of whom were Muslims, were successful farmers and grew vegetables, fruit, and grain before their land was acquired by Jewish settlers. In 1944/45 all of the 156 dunums that were left in the hands of the villagers were allocated to cereals. Two km east of the village was Tall Isma'il, on top of which was a Bedouin cemetery. Because the soil of such mounds, which contain the remains of earlier settlements, is soft, they are attractive to Bedouin as cemetery sites.
