Beersheba

Human settlement in the area dates from the Copper Age. The inhabitants lived in caves, crafting metal tools and raising cattle.[9] Findings unearthed at Tel Sheva, an archaeological site east of modern-day Beersheba, suggest the region has been inhabited since the 4th millennium BC.[10]

Tel Sheva archaeological site

Tel Sheva, an archaeological site containing the ruins of an ancient town believed to have been the Biblical Beersheba, lies a few kilometers east of the modern city. The town dates to the early Israelite period, around the 10th century BCE. The site was probably chosen due to the abundance of water, as evidenced by the numerous wells in the area. According to the Hebrew Bible, the wells were dug by Abraham and Isaac when they arrived there. The streets were laid out in a grid, with separate areas for administrative, commercial, military, and residential use. It is believed to have been the first planned settlement in the region, and is also noteworthy for its elaborate water system; in particular, a huge cistern carved out of the rock beneath the town.

During the Persian rule 539 BC–c. 332 BC Beersheba was at the south of Yehud Medinata autonomous province of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. During that era the city was rebuilt[11] and a citadel had been built.[12] Archeological finds from between 359 and 338 BC have been made and include pottery and Ostracon.[12]

During the Hasmonean rule, the city did not take importance as it was not mentioned when conquered from Edom or described in the Hasmonean wars.[11]

During Roman rule the city was in the Coele-Syria region. During the Roman era and later Byzantine periods, the town served as a front-line defense against Nabatean attacks. Around 64-63 BC Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus made Be'er Sheva the southern part of the Judea province, in the following years the city was on the limes belt, which in this region is attributed to the time of Vespasian,[13] The city become center of an eparchy in around 268.[13]

Beersheba was described in the Madaba Map and Eusebius of Caesarea as a large village with a Roman garrison.[14]

The last inhabitants of Tel Be'er Sheva were the Byzantines, who abandoned the city during the Muslim conquest of the Levant. The city was destroyed[15] and remained abandoned until the late 19th century. Some pottery from late Byzantine and early Islamic rule has been found.[16]

Beersheba in 1901

View of Beersheba from the south in 1902.

Beersheba, 1917

The present-day city was built to serve as an administrative center by the Ottoman administration for the benefit of the Bedouin at the outset of the 20th century and was given the name of Bir al-Sabi (well of the seven). Until World War I, it was an overwhelmingly Muslim township, with some 1,000 residents.[17] Ben-David and Kressel have argued that the Bedouin traditional market was the cornerstone for the founding of Beersheba as capital of the Negev during this period,[18]^:3 and Negev Bedouin anthropologist and educationalist, Aref Abu-Rabia, who worked for the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture, described it as "the first Bedouin city."[19]^:ix

In June 1899, the Ottoman government ordered the creation of the Beersheba sub-district (kaza) of the district (mutasarrıflık) of Jerusalem, with Beersheba to be developed as its capital.[20] Implementation was entrusted to a special bureau of the Ministry of the Interior.[20] There were multiple reasons for the decision. The British incorporation of Sinai into Egypt led to a need for the Ottomans to consolidate their hold on southern Palestine.[20] There was also a desire to encourage the Bedouin to become sedentary, with a predicted increase of tranquility and tax revenue.[20] The first governor (kaymakam), Isma'il Kamal Bey, lived in a tent lent by the local sheikh until the government house (Saraya) was built.[21] Kamal was replaced by Muhammed Carullah Efendi in 1901, who in turn was replaced by Hamdi Bey in 1903.[20] The governor in 1908 was promoted to 'adjoint' (mutassarrıf muavin) to the governor of the Jerusalem district, which placed him above the other sub-district governors.[20]

A visitor to Beersheba in May 1900 found only a ruin, a two-storey stone khan, and several tents.[22] By the start of 1901 there was a barracks with a small garrison and other buildings.[23] The Austro-Hungarian-Czech orientalist[24] Alois Musil noted in August 1902:

Bir es-Seba grows from day to day; This year, instead of the tents, we found stately houses along a beautiful road from the Sarayah to the bed of the wadi. In the government building a garden has been laid out, and all sorts of trees have been planted which are sure to prosper, for the few shrubs planted two years ago by the steam mill at the south-east end of the road have grown considerably. The lively construction activity is also causing a lively exploitation of the ruins.[25]

By 1907 there was a large village and military post, with a residence for the kaymakam and a large mosque.[26] The population increased from 300 to 800 between 1902 and 1911, and by 1914 there were 1,000 people living in 200 houses.[20]

A plan for the town in the form of a grid was developed by a Swiss and a German architect and two others.[27][28] The grid pattern can be seen today in Beersheba's Old City. Most of the residents at the time were Arabs from Hebron and the Gaza area, although Jews also began settling in the city. Many Bedouin abandoned their nomadic lives and built homes in Beersheba.[29]

Beersheba 1938

Beersheba Turkish Railway Station

During World War I, the Ottomans built a military railroad from the Hejaz line to Beersheba, inaugurating the station on October 30, 1915.[30] The celebration was attended by the Ottoman army commander Jamal Pasha and other senior government officials. The train line was captured by Allied forces in 1917, towards the end of the war. Today, it forms part of the Israeli railway network.

Beersheba played an important role in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Battle of Beersheba was part of a wider British offensive in aimed at breaking the Turkish defensive line from Gaza to Beersheba. On October 31, 1917, three months after taking Rafah, General Allenby's troops breached the line of Turkish defense between Gaza and Beersheba.[31] Approximately five-hundred soldiers of the Australian 4th Light Horse Regiment and the 12th Light Horse Regiment of the 4th Light Horse Brigade, led by Brigadier General William Grant, with only horses and bayonets, charged the Turkish trenches, overran them and captured the wells in what has become known as the Battle of Beersheba, called the "last successful cavalry charge in British military history."[32][33] On the edge of Beersheba's Old City is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery containing the graves of Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers. The town also contains a memorial park dedicated to them.

During the Palestine Mandate, Beersheba was a major administrative center. The British constructed a railway between Rafah and Beersheba in October 1917; it opened to the public in May 1918, serving the Negev and settlements south of Mount Hebron.[34] In 1928, at the beginning of the tension between the Jews and the Arabs over control of Palestine, and wide-scale rioting which left 133 Jews dead and 339 wounded, many Jews abandoned Beersheba, although some returned occasionally. After an Arab attack on a Jewish bus in 1936, which escalated into the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, the remaining Jews left.[35]

At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine, Beersheba had a population of 2,012 Muslims, 235 Christians, 98 Jews and 11 Druze (total 2,356).[36] At the time of the 1931 census, Beersheba had 545 occupied houses and a population of 2,791 Muslims, 152 Christians, 11 Jews and 5 Baháʼí (total 2,959).[37] The 1945 village survey conducted by the Palestine Mandate government found 5,360 Muslims, 200 Christians and 10 others (total 5,570).[38]

Beersheba 1945 1:250,000

Beersheba 1947 1:20,000

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  Beersheba 1948
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  Beersheba police station. 1948. Original building Ottoman with British Mandate addition.
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  Beersheba mosque. 1948
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  A mosque in Be'ersheva photographed during Operation Yoav, 1948
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  Harel Brigade assembling in Beersheba prior to Operation Horev, 25 December 1948
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  Nahal Beersheba in flood, 1948

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performing in Beersheba, Israel, 1948

Monument to the Negev Brigade, Danny Karavan

Beersheba in the 1960s

In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) proposed that Beersheba be included within the Jewish state in their partition plan for Palestine.[39] However, when the UN's Ad Hoc Committee revised the plan, they moved Beersheva to the Arab state on account of it being primarily Arab.[39][40] Egyptian forces had been stationed at Beersheva since May 1948.

It was Yigal Allon who proposed the conquest of Beersheba,[41] which was approved by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, he ordered the "conquest of Beersheba, occupation of outposts around it, [and] demolition of most of the town."[42] The objective was to break the Egyptian blockade of Israeli convoys to the Negev. The Egyptian army did not expect an offensive and fled en masse.[43] Israel bombed the town on October 16,[44] At 4:00 am on October 21, the 8th Brigade's 89th battalion and the Negev Brigade's 7th and 9th battalions moved in, some troops advancing from Mishmar HaNegev junction, 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Beersheba, others from the Turkish train station and Hatzerim. By 9:45, Beersheba was in Israeli hands. Around 120 Egyptian soldiers were taken prisoner. All of the Arab inhabitants, who had resisted, were expelled [17] with the remaining Arab civilians, 200 men and 150 women and children, taken to the police fort and, on October 25, the women, children, disabled and elderly were driven by truck to the Gaza border. The Egyptian soldiers were interned in POW camps. Some men lived in the local mosque and were put to work cleaning but when it was discovered that they were supplying information to the Egyptian army they were also deported.[42] The town was subject to large-scale looting by the Haganah, and by December, in one calculation, the total number of Arabs driven out from Beersheva and surrounding areas reached 30,000 with many ending up in Jordan as refugees.[44][45] Following Operation Yoav, a 10-kilometer radius exclusion zone around Beersheba was enforced into which no Bedouin were allowed.[46] In response, the United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions on the 4th and 16 November demanding that Israel withdraw from the area.[47]

Following the conclusion of the war, the 1949 Armistice Agreements formally granted Beersheba to Israel. The town was then transformed into an Israeli city with only an exiguous Arab minority.[17] Beersheba was deemed strategically important due to its location with a reliable water supply and at a major crossroads, northwest to Hebron and Jerusalem, east to the Dead Sea and al Karak, south to Aqaba, west to Gaza and southwest to Al-Auja and the border with Egypt.[43]

After a few months, the town's war-damaged houses were repaired. As a post-independence wave of Jewish immigration to Israel began, Beersheba experienced a population boom as thousands of immigrants moved in. The city rapidly expanded beyond its core, which became known as the "Old City," as new neighborhoods were built around it, complete with various housing projects such as apartment buildings and houses with auxiliary farms, as well as shopping centers and schools. The Old City was turned into a city center, with shops, restaurants, and government and utility offices. An industrial area and one of the largest cinemas in Israel were also built in the city. By 1956, Beersheba was a booming city of 22,000.[48][49] In 1959, during the Wadi Salib riots, riots spread quickly to other parts of the country, including Beersheba.[50]

Soroka Hospital opened its doors in 1960. By 1968, the population had grown to 80,000.[51] The University of the Negev, which would later become Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was established in 1969. The then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat visited Beersheba in 1979. In 1983, its population was more than 110,000. During the 1990s post-Soviet aliyah, the city's population greatly increased as many immigrants from the former Soviet Union settled there.

Beersheba in the mid-1980s

As part of its Blueprint Negev project, the Jewish National Fund funded major redevelopment projects in Beersheba. One project was the Beersheba River Walk, a 900-acre (3.6-square-kilometre) riverfront district with green spaces, hiking trails, a 3,000-seat sports hall, a 15-acre (6.1-hectare) boating lake filled with recycled waste water, promenades, restaurants, cafés, galleries, boat rentals, a 12,000-seat amphitheater, playgrounds, and a bridge along the route of the city's Mekorot water pipes.[52] At the official entrance to the river park is the Beit Eshel Park, which consists of a park built around a courtyard with historic remains from the settlement of Beit Eshel.[53]

Panorama of Beersheba

Pipes Bridge, 2012

Modern Beersheba

Four new shopping malls were also built. Among them is Kanyon Beersheba, a 115,000-square-metre (1,240,000-square-foot) ecologically planned mall with pools for collecting rainwater and lighting generated by solar panels on the roof. It will be situated next to an 8,000-meter park with bicycle paths.[53][54][55] In addition, the first ever farmer's market in Israel was established as an enclosed, circular complex with 400 spaces for vendors surrounded by parks and greenery.[53]

A new central bus station was built in the city. The station has a glass-enclosed complex also containing shops and cafés.[53]

Some $10.5 million was also invested in renovating Beersheba's Old City, preserving historical buildings and upgrading infrastructure.[56] The Turkish Quarter was also redeveloped with newly cobbled streets, widened sidewalks, and the restoration of Turkish homes into areas for dining and shopping.[52]

In 2011, city hall announced plans to turn Beersheba into the "water city" of Israel.[57] One of the projects, "Beersheva beach," is a 7-dunam fountain opposite city hall.[58][59] Other projects included fountains near the Soroka Medical Center and in front of the Shamoon College of Engineering.

In the 1990s, as skyscrapers began to appear in Israel, the construction of high-rise buildings began in Beersheba.[60] Today, downtown Beersheba has been described as a "clean, compact, and somewhat sterile-looking collection of high-rise office and residential towers."[61] The city's tallest building is Rambam Square 2, a 32-story apartment building.[62] Many additional high-rise buildings are planned or are under construction, including skyscrapers.[63][64][65] There are further plans to build luxury residential towers in the city.[66]

In December 2012, a plan to build 16,000 new housing units in the Ramot Gimel neighborhood was scrapped in favor of creating a new urban forest, which spans 1,360 acres (550 ha) and serves as the area's "green lung", as part of the plans to develop a "green band" around the city. The forest includes designated picnic areas, biking trails, and walking trails. According to Mayor Ruvik Danilovich, Beersheba still has an abundance of open, underdeveloped spaces that can be used for urban development.[67]

In 2017, a new urban building plan was approved for the city, designed to raise the city's population to 340,000 by 2030. Under the plan, 13,000 more housing units will be built, along with industrial and business developments occupying a total of four million square meters. A second public hospital is also planned.[68] Planning for a light rail system also began.[69] In 2019, the construction of a new public hospital, which will be named after Shimon Peres, was approved. The hospital will be a 345-acre complex that will feature 1,900 beds, commerce, hotel, alternative medicine, and paramedical services, and research centers, with the possibility of apartment units for medical faculty employees, students, and senior housing. It will be linked to the rest of the city by a light rail system.[70]

On October 19, 1998, sixty four people were wounded in a grenade attack.[71] On August 31, 2004, sixteen people were killed in two suicide bombings on commuter buses in Beersheba for which Hamas claimed responsibility. On August 28, 2005, another suicide bomber attacked the central bus station, seriously injuring two security guards and 45 bystanders.[72] During Operation Cast Lead, which began on December 27, 2008 and lasted until the ceasefire on January 18, 2009, Hamas fired 2,378 rockets (such as Grad rockets) and mortars, from Gaza into southern Israel, including Beersheba. The rocket attacks have continued, but have been only partially effective since the introduction of the Iron Dome rocket defense system.[73][74][75][76]

In 2010 an Arab attacked and injured two people with an axe.[77][78][79] In 2012, a Palestinian from Jenin was stopped before a stabbing attack in a "safe house."[80][81] On October 18, 2015, a lone gunman shot and killed a soldier guarding the Beersheva bus station before being gunned down by police.[82] In September 2016, the Shin Bet thwarted a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror attack at a wedding hall in Beersheba.[83][84]

Beersheba has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWh) with Mediterranean influences. The city has both characteristics of Mediterranean and desert climates. Summers are hot and dry, and winters are mild. Rainfall is highly concentrated in the winter season, even more so than other cities with a similar climate such as Almería in southern Spain. In summer, the temperatures are high in daytime and nighttime with an average high of 34.7 °C (94 °F) and an average low of 21.4 °C (71 °F). Winters have an average high of 17.7 °C (64 °F) and average low of 7.1 °C (45 °F). Snow is very rare; a snowfall on February 20, 2015 was the first such occurrence in the city since 1992.[88]

Precipitation in summer is rare, the most rainfalls come in winter between September to May, but the annual amount is low, averaging 195.1 millimeters (7.7 in) per year. Sandstorms, haze and fog are common, especially in winter, as a result of the high humidity.

The Great Mosque of Beersheba in 1948

In 1906, during the Ottoman era, the Great Mosque of Beersheba was built with donations collected from the Bedouin residents in the Negev. It was used actively as a mosque until the city fell to Israeli forces in 1948.[115] The mosque was used until 1953 as the city's courthouse. From then until the 1990s, when it was closed for renovations, the building housed an archeological museum, which the city intended to turn into the archeological branch of the Negev Museum.[116] In 2011, however, the Supreme Court of Israel, sitting as the High Court of Justice, ordered the property to be turned into a museum of Islam without reverting to a place of worship.[117]

Beersheba is linked to Hilvan by the Abraham Path.