According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Beersheva had a population of 219,000 at the end of 2023, shrinking 0.1% during the year, making it Israel's ninth biggest city. In 1995, Beersheva was Israel's fifth biggest city after Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Rishon Lezion. But since then it has been overtaken by Petah Tikva, Netanya, Ashdod and Bnei Brak – all cities near the center of the country and Tel Aviv.
Despite a 43% increase in population in Beersheva over the past three decades and the fact that over the past 20 years, more than 20,000 housing units have been built there, the center of the country is densely populated with a much larger number of residents.
Beersheva Mayor Rubik Danilovich blames the government. He says, "I asked the most recent prime ministers – Bennett, Lapid and Netanyahu – how do you see the Negev 100 years after the founding of the state, and nobody answered me. I don't say that it doesn't interest them but nobody is dealing with it."
Even if the recent heads of government did not answer Danilovich, the government's answer is clear: Beersheva, which in the early decades of the state was called the "Capital of the Negev," continues to be the largest city in the south, but its status is being eroded.
Demography
One population sector that is eager to move to Beersheva is the Bedouin from the surrounding region.
A real estate developer says, "The Bedouin also want to get ahead. There is a wealthy and educated population among them, and the state has not developed the surrounding (Bedouin) settlements, and people do not want to return from work to a village of shacks. In recent years, we have seen more and more Bedouin buying properties for themselves in places that are identified as Jewish."
This is happening in the expansions of Meitar and Lehavim, but also in apartments in Beersheva. "In my opinion, it started with the subsidized government housing programs in which Bedouin exercised their right to participate in the program and win an apartment at a discount, then they took advantage of a situation where the Jewish sector showed less interest in the many projects in Beersheva, and purchased apartments in them. It reminds me of places in the north like Karmiel and Nof HaGalil, which attracted an Arab population from nearby communities because construction in their villages was not sufficient."
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According to the latest Central Bureau of Statistics data from 2022, only 4% of the city's residents are Muslim, so overall view the scope of the phenomenon is limited.
The Haredi population, which also suffers from an acute housing shortage, has found housing solutions for itself in Dimona, Arad and Netivot, the same developers observes.
The National Economic Council's strategic housing plan, published about two months ago, makes it clear that these two populations, Haredim and Arabs, will make up the majority in the Negev in the future. Between 2026 and 2030, 9,600 housing units will be built in the Negev each year, with 48% for the non-Haredi Jewish population. In 20 years, the Negev will need 15,000 housing units per year, of which only 18% will be designated for the non-Haredi Jewish public.
Transport
"Rapid transport is absurd," says Danilovich. "Before they invested billions in transport, the journey on the line from Beersheva to Tel Aviv was faster. Today, after the investment, the train stops and stops and stops – seven stations from Beersheva to Tel Aviv, and this is absurd. The new underground railway plan needs to be promoted now and the train needs to run at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour and not 160 kilometers per hour. Prioritize the project for 2030, which is tomorrow morning. I have an advantage, for example, in higher quality of housing for the cost of living, and this is good for the country, because it is a more correct population distribution."
Planning and employment
A city that is defined as a regional capital is measured not by the number of building starts, but by economic strength, employment, and its relevance to the residents of the cities in its region. All of these are reflected in commuting, in coming from surrounding communities for jobs, and Beersheva's status is in decline. "It is perhaps the capital of the Negev for the Bedouin population from the surrounding villages, who need shopping and government services. For everyone else, it is not a capital," says Prof. Nurit Alfasi, who heads the urban planning program in the Department of Environmental, Geoinformatics and Urban Planning Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Alfasi explains, "they used to think that if a city reaches a certain number of residents, a certain growth threshold then the urban engine would start kicking in on its own. Of course, this doesn't happen because it's not a question of the number of residents. In the last 30 years, people have been talking about proper urban planning in diversity, density, accessibility and connectivity. This is the heart of urbanism. But Beersheva is spreading out over more and more areas and neighborhoods, and is losing urbanism."
Is it local planning? It seems that the problem is actually national.
"Also. The country is planned from above, without the development of a local identity. There is no reason why Beersheva shouldn't be a successful secondary hub an hour and a half away, 100 kilometers or so from Tel Aviv. This happens everywhere in the world. I believe that the urban experience here is terrible, and is pulling Beersheva down. They are spreading new neighborhoods of single-family homes here, they have made a master plan here with an investment of millions, but they are not working according to it."
What about jobs?
Alfasi: "The lucrative employment in Israel is high-tech and IT, and its spatial dispersion is led by employees. Employees need space, and they want proximity to their homes for work, entertainment, and restaurants during leisure. In Beersheva, they built a park near the railway station. But it doesn't work like that. People will arrive by train but not move to Beersheva, because they won't be willing to disconnect from the abundance and the enormous scope of options they have in the center. Very few employees have moved to live in Beersheva, and the place remains outside the urban development, instead of becoming a place like Ramat Hahayal (in Tel Aviv)."
Let's assume that local planning is part in this. Can the state contribute to the situation?
"This is also a very significant component, because the state today is forcing the city to compete with its suburbs. The growth of Dimona, Ofakim, Yerucham, and the new settlements that are being established, all of these are driven by economic motives of land marketing and also national values and the settlement of the Negev, etc. And that leaves Beersheva as a place that competes with its suburbs and fails, because it turns itself into another suburb.
"The state is abandoning it and leaving the (Negev) cities to compete with each other. There is crazy cannibalism there. There is almost no ability to cooperate, because everyone is competing with each other. The transfer of the IDF to the south was presented as strengthening the Negev, and that is nonsense. The state cleared areas in the center of the country and sold it as 'development of the Negev.' "In short, this is developing the center of the country."
Danilovich emphasizes the city's efforts to attract quality employment: expanding the high-tech complex, a new Elta robotics factory, transferring the IDF's IT, cyber and intelligence divisions. "We need to include housing, employment for couples, leisure culture and give people a vision to settle here after military service," he says.
Danilovich details projects such as a new biotech park, planning a light rail that will reach Arad and the southern Hebron Hills, various cultural enterprises and children's activities, which he estimates will greatly strengthen the city's attractiveness in the eyes of residents from outside, and his goal is, contrary to the reality described by Alfasi, that employees there will also be its residents.
"For that, you need attractiveness, jobs, and health services. Why did I fight for Sheba to be the second hospital in Beersheva? Because I understood that without a good health system and without competition between Soroka and another good hospital, we cannot keep doctors, technicians, and nurses here."
Tax benefits: Nearby cities have an 18% benefit
According to Danilovich, one of Beersheva's main problems is that the surrounding towns – Ofakim, Yeruham, and others – receive tax benefits of up to 18%, which can result in savings of thousands of shekels per year per household, while Beersheva does not benefit.
A local developers says, "You can see today young families moving to Ofakim, ten minutes from Beersheva, buying cheaper apartments, and saving themselves a lot of money because of the tax benefits, which greatly help them with their mortgage repayments." According to Central Bureau of Statistics data for 2022, while 206 residents moved from Ofakim to Beersheva, 735 moved in the opposite direction. 125 came from Netivot, while 430 left. 239 people came from Tel Aviv, and 445 left.
Danilovich: "We gave all the surrounding settlements tax benefits and they all became a neighborhood outside of Beersheva. Ofakim with the new highways is ten minutes from Beersheva and Yerucham 11 minutes. So why should they live in Beersheva? The tax benefits need to be restored to Beersheva, even if at a reduced level. All the things I'm saying require comprehensive thinking and planning, but what you see is just land marketing."
One plan for the entire metropolitan region
There were more than 25,000 building starts in the seven leading cities in the Negev – Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachi, Sderot, Netivot, Ofakim, Dimona and Beersheva, according to Central Bureau of Statistics data for 2020-2024.
Beersheva leads with about 6,400 building starts, but much smaller cities do not trail far behind, including Netivot with about 5,400, and Ofakim with 4,480.
But the high number of building starts does not say anything about the quality of the new neighborhoods in all these cities. "Prisons," Alfasi calls them.
Asked whether these places are not flourishing, she replies: "Make no mistake. Kiryat Gat is not flourishing and Ofakim is not flourishing. The fact that they are building a lot in Kiryat Gat is not flourishing. Quite the opposite. This leaves empty, terrible, miserable spaces within the cities.
"The same thing in Ofakim. They build high-rise buildings there at low density on land that was agricultural, and now it turns into high-rise neighborhoods without an identity, where you don't know where you are: in Karmiel, Kiryat Gat or Petah Tikva.
"The entrance to the city passes through parking lots and semi-abandoned industrial areas. The heart of the city there includes empty lots that have not been built on, empty spaces, old, crumbling single-family homes. There is no commercial street there and there is nothing. But on paper everything is flourishing."
Danilovich believes that for the good of all cities, the planning of the Negev should be looked at from a comprehensive perspective. He adds, "I am very, very happy that Dimona and Ofakim are developing. I want all the towns in the Negev to prosper. That is the essence of the metropolitan region, But the story here is not Beersheva, but the Negev. What will the area that constitutes 60% or more of the State of Israel look like? This is the biggest missed opportunity for the State of Israel. The state is only looking at the housing crisis. 'Let's market and market and market.' But without fast and available transportation, and high-quality jobs with high wages and the best education system in the country, without a rich leisure culture and without tax benefits for all the settlements in a staggered manner. No one is looking at the inclusion of the Negev to turn it into the new demand area of the state.
"I believe it is possible. But I see that I am taking one step forward, and the state, instead of participating with me with all its power, is taking two steps back."
In what way?
"Because it doesn't do one plan for the entire metropolitan region. Ultimately, we have to ask – what are our goals in the Negev? How many residents do we want here? But the state disperses everything, and makes a separate plan for the eastern Negev and a separate plan for the western Negev. This whole country is like the periphery of London or New York. So you're dividing the Negev into three parts as well?"
So where's the problem?
"The state has stopped planning for the long term. Look at the story of the airport in Nevatim. They said 20 years ago that there would be a catastrophe if there wasn't a second airport. They've set up several committees, and they can't make a decision. And they don't understand that time is critical.
"This is a march of folly. The state should do it, but I feel that everything has to come from our initiative. And this is despite the fact that the state is very centralized – education is its own, personal security is its own, health is its own." "Market as much as you want, the question is how to make the area attractive to residents from outside, because otherwise we are only creating cannibalization within ourselves. If the state does not understand that this requires different priorities and an investment of tens of billions of shekels in a long-term project, and making decisions based on tested and measurable goals. If the state only markets and markets to sectoral populations, then it is missing the target."
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on May 25, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.
