History
Kiryat Gat was established in 1955 as a development town by 18 families from Morocco. It was situated on land of the nearby village of Iraq al-Manshiyya, which was depopulated in 1948. The population rose from 4,400 inhabitants in 1958 to 17,000 in 1969, mostly Jewish immigrants from North Africa. The economy was initially based on processing the agricultural produce of the Lachish region, such as cotton and wool. In December 1972, Kiryat Gat's municipal status was upgraded and it became Israel's 31st city.
During the 1990s, the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, brought many new residents to the town and its population grew to 42,500 by 1995. The development of the Rabin industrial zone on the eastern edge of the city, and the opening of Highway 6 further improved the economy of the city.
Read more about this topic: Kiryat Gat
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)