Dimona

The story

Dimona stands in the eastern Negev, about thirty-five kilometers southeast of Beersheba and about thirty-five west of the Dead Sea. Its area of jurisdiction, two hundred and twenty square kilometers, makes it the largest city in Israel in area. Its name comes from the book of Joshua, from the list of the cities of Judah on the border of Edom: "And Kinah, and Dimonah, and Adadah". The name was fixed already in 1952. There were those who saw pessimistically the possibility of founding a city in the heart of the desert, and nicknamed the locality "Dimyona" or "Dim'ona". The founding began in May 1955, when Solel Boneh put up here about sixty huts; about fifty for dwelling and the rest for public buildings. The first residents, thirty-five families with one hundred and twenty-three souls among them, arrived on 19 September 1955, straight from the ship "Agion" that brought them from Morocco. They were chosen as young people fit for work and holding a trade in the field of building, and they were not asked whether they wished to settle here. The huts were of twenty-four square meters, arranged in three rows and painted green, which stood out in the landscape. In February 1956, less than half a year later, the first fifteen permanent houses were handed over; the transit camp was dismantled at the beginning of the 1960s. The town was declared a local council in 1958 and a city in 1969. At the end of 1958 the textile plant "Kitan" opened in it. In the 1960s a considerable immigration came to it from India, mainly from the Bene Israel community, and in the 1970s and the 1990s immigrants from the Soviet Union and from other countries. Since 1969 the community of the Hebrews has also lived in it.

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