Beersheva is one of the oldest cities in the world. Its history goes back thousands of years.
Beersheva
Beersheva’s initial existence was based on the fact that it was strategically located on the main trading roads junction between East and West, and it had water available for drinking, crops and sustaining animals.
Abraham arrived in Beersheva in the second millennium B.C.E. and dug wells (7 wells – and thus the name Be’er, meaning “well” and Sheva, meaning “seven”).
For a long time, the site of Beersheva designated the southern point of the territory of the Israelites, which extended “from Dan to Beersheva”. Thereafter, it is not mentioned until the moment when the Romans establish a garrison there in 70 C.E. to contain and control the Nabateans, the semi-nomadic tribe of Trans-Jordan, who were allied with the Jews in the revolt against Rome.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Turks built a police station in Beersheba in order to control the Bedouin and it became a gathering for other inhabitants. During the period of the British Mandate, Beersheba remained a small administrative center, with police and local courts. Most residents worked for the British. On 21 October 1948, as part of Operation Yoav, the Israel Defense Forces captured Beersheba from the Egyptian Army, which had invaded Israel and captured Beersheba in May 1948.
Beersheba has grown considerably since then. A large portion of the population is made up of the descendants of Sephardi Jews and Mizrahi Jews who immigrated from Arab countries after 1948, as well as smaller communities of Bene Israel and Cochin Jews who immigrated from India. Several additional waves of immigration have occurred since the early 1990s, bringing Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, as well as Beta Israel immigrants from Ethiopia.
Thanks to the influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, chess has turned into a major sport in Beersheva. The city is now Israel’s nation al chess capital, boasting more chess Grand masters per capita than any other city in the world.
In 2012, the Beersheba “ring trail,” a 42-kilometer hiking trail around the city, won third place in the annual environmental competition of the European Travelers Association.
Beersheva
Until 2004 there were almost no terrorist attacks in Beersheba but on 31 August 2004, sixteen people were killed in two suicide bombings on buses in Beersheba for which the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas claimed responsibility. On August 28, 2005, another suicide bomber attacked this time at the central bus station seriously injuring two security guards
Ian Ramon, obm. Israel’s first astronaut
Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who was killed in the Columbia Shuttle disaster, was a resident of Beersheva.