Beit HaArava () is an

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

and

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

in the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

. Located near the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

and

Jericho Jericho ( ; , ) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and the capital of the Jericho Governorate. Jericho is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It had a population of 20,907 in 2017. F ...

at the eponymous Beit HaArava Junction, the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 90, it falls under the jurisdiction of Megilot Regional Council. In it had a population of . The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

History

The village was originally established in 1939 by European members of

Zionist youth movement A Zionist youth movement () is an organization formed for Jewish children and adolescents for educational, social, and ideology, ideological development, including a belief in Zionism, Jewish nationalism as represented in the State of Israel. Yout ...

s who had fled

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

via

Youth Aliyah Youth Aliyah (Hebrew: עלית הנוער, ''Aliyat Hano'ar'', German: Jugend-Alijah, Youth Immigration) is a Jewish organization that rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Nazis during the Third Reich. Youth Aliyah arranged for their r ...

. David Coren, later a member of the

Knesset The Knesset ( , ) is the Unicameralism, unicameral legislature of Israel. The Knesset passes all laws, elects the President of Israel, president and Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister, approves the Cabinet of Israel, cabinet, and supe ...

, was also amongst the founders. It was named after the biblical village of the same name allocated to the

tribe of Benjamin According to the Torah, the Tribe of Benjamin () was one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The tribe was descended from Benjamin, the youngest son of the Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch Jacob (later given the name Israel) and his wife Rachel. In the ...

(), located in the

Arabah The Arabah/Araba () or Aravah/Arava () is a loosely defined geographic area in the Negev Desert, south of the Dead Sea basin, which forms part of the border between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east. The old meaning, which was in use ...

plain, and means "House in the Desert". According to the

Jewish National Fund The Jewish National Fund (JNF; , ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael''; previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') is a non-profit organizationProfessor Alon Tal, The Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, The Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben Gurion ...

, the Kibbutz became famous for its experiments in

land reclamation Land reclamation, often known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lake ...

, the residents reclaiming land that had never been previously cultivated. Kibbutz-movement historian Zvi Dror published a history of the founding of Beit HaArava in 1994, entitled ''Shutfut Bema'aseh Habria (literally, "Participating in the Act of Creation"). In 1947, Beit HaArava had a population of over 200. On 20 May 1948, after a failure to reach an agreement with Transjordan's King Abdullah, Beit HaArava and the nearby

Kalya Kalya () is an Israeli settlement organized as a kibbutz in the West Bank. It was originally established in 1929 but was occupied and destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948; it was later rebuilt in 1968 after the Six-Day War. Located on the nort ...

were abandoned due to their isolation during the fighting of the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

. The residents of the villages evacuated to the Israeli post at Sodom. Its members were later temporarily housed in kibbutz

Shefayim Shefayim (, ''lit.'' High Hills) is a kibbutz in central Israel located 2.5 miles north of Herzliya along the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast. Shefayim falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaSharon Regional Council. In it had a population o ...

, and ultimately split into two groups which in 1949 founded the kibbutzim of Gesher HaZiv and Kabri in the Western Galilee. According to ARIJ, in 1980 Israel expropriated 506

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s of land from the

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

site of Nabi Musa in order to expand construction at Beit HaArava.An Nabi Musa Locality Profile
ARIJ, p. 7 In 1980, Beit HaArava was re-established as a

Nahal Nahal () (acronym of ''Noar Halutzi Lohem'', lit. Fighting Pioneer Youth) is a program that combines military service with mostly social welfare and informal education projects such as youth movement activities, as well as training in entrepr ...

outpost. It became a civilian community in 1986. In 2000, the site of village moved 2 kilometres westwards. Today Beit HaArava has 70 families, 30 of them members of the kibbutz, numbering approximately 400 people, with an increase of 36,5% in 2019 being the fastest growing municipality in the whole of Israel.

Economy

The world's largest operating solar pond for electricity generation was the Beit HaArava pond, which was operated until 1988. The pond had an area of 210,000 m² or 40,000 m² When using a pond of surface area of 1.5 km² this would have generated 5 MWe.

References

{{Authority control Community settlements Israeli settlements in the West Bank Kibbutzim Kibbutz Movement Populated places established in 1939 Populated places established in 1980 Nahal settlements Jewish villages in Mandatory Palestine Jewish villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Non-religious Israeli settlements 1939 establishments in Mandatory Palestine 1980 establishments in the Israeli Military Governorate German-Jewish culture in Israel