Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", Be’er Sheva is today the seventh-largest city in Israel. The broad roads build in the 1950ties reflect the imagined growth potential of the city. Today, Be’er Sheva is part of a new Master plan that seeks to double its inhabitants in the next decade. Before Be’er Sheva turned into a laboratory of modern housing projects of the new state of Israel after 1948, it functioned over centuries as a central oasis of the Bedounine tribes. The Ottoman Empire, who had controlled Palestine since the 16th century, took only interest in Be’er Sheva end of the 19th century because of military reasons. The site grew in importance when roads were built and a number of small buildings from local materials erected, as a strategic position towards to the Suez Canal. A town plan was created by the Ottomans allies in Palestine, by German and Austrian architects, which called for a grid street pattern that still can be seen today in Be’er Sheva's Old City, and is often falsely apostrophe as an Arab Kasbah. All houses built during that period were of one story including a Patio Courtyard; only the two-story police station towered above them. Most of the city's residents were Bedouins from Hebron and the Gaza area, although some abandoned their nomadic lives and built homes in and around Be’er shebva.
During WW I the Ottoman Empire built a military railroad from the Hejaz line to Be’er Sheva, inaugurating the station on October 30, 1915. The celebration was attended by the Ottomans army commander Jamal Pasha (later known as Atatürk), along with senior government officials and German generals. The train line was active until the British took over the region. Be’er Sheva was the first city taken by the British in the Palestine campaign (1917) of World War I. The Battle of Be’er Sheva was part of a wider British offensive in World War I aimed at breaking the defensive line from Gaza to Be’er Sheva. In 1947, Bir Seb'a (Arabic: بيئر شيبع) was envisioned as part of the Arab state in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Following the declaration of Israel's independence, the Egyptian army amassed its forces in Be’er Sheva. In October 1948, the Israel Defense Forces conquered the city.
The building of the new town of Be’er Sheva is located in the context of the Zionist project and the new state building process after WW II and the departure of the British mandate troops. The planning of so-called Development towns was a strategy to build settlements near the borders of the new Israeli state. Be’er Sheva is placed in the Negev desert near to the Palestinian border. The urban master plans of this era followed the goal of decentralization the newly arrived immigrants oafter 1948. A large seize of the population of Be’er Sheva’s inhabitants are Jews who immigrated from North African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Since 1990 immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union arrived in the city. In the beginning of the 1950ties Be’er Sheva was build after the model of the English garden city, each neighborhood was planned separated from each other and should function autonomously. Only some years later the planning office began to consolidate the town taken the ideas of the IBA Berlin 1956 as well as the Neighborhood Unit ideas by Clarence Perry into account. It's so called Model Neighborhood (Hashekhuna ledugma) including the Hashatiah (lit. "The carpet") settlement was initiated and discussed internationally in architecture circles and magazines. The architect Nahum Zolotov says about the Be’er Sheva planning’s in an interview with Noam Dvir in the Haaretz Magazine "We knew we were doing something experimental, that it was something unusual." Zolotov was part of the steering committee for the model neighborhood and responsible, along with Daniel Havkin, for planning the so-called carpet buildings of Be’er Sheva's Hashatiah ("The Carpet") neighborhood.“ This „Carpet or Patio house structure is very similar to Michel Ecochard's Housing grid developed for factory workers in the outskirts of Casablanca in 1952 under French colonial rule. Furthermore, the two sites are strongly connected due to the diasporic histories and the lived experience of Moroccan Jews in Israel, as people living in the Carpet Settlements in Be’er Sheva are North-African Jews who have been settled in developments towns after their arrivals in Israel and the transit camps. A transnational relation that is also expressed in many chat rooms and blocks, like for example the http://www.darnna.com/phorum. (MvO)
Sources:
Darnna, Netzseite, 2007, http://www.darnna.com/phorum/read.php?18,108229, Zugriff am 16. Juli
