Bat Yam - History

History

Bat Yam was established in 1926 as Bayit VaGan (Hebrew: בית וגן; House and Garden). During the 1929 Palestine riots, the town was attacked by Palestinian fighters from Jaffa and was evacuated by British Authorities. In 1930, it was re-settled. In 1936, it was granted local council status and renamed Bat Yam. By 1945, 2,000 Jews were living in Bat Yam. According to the Jewish National Fund, in 1947 it had a population of 4,000.

Following the United Nations vote in favour of a partition plan on November 29, 1947 and the subsequent civil war, inhabitants of both Bat Yam and Jaffa complained on violent incidents, including sniping. On May 13, 1948, Jaffa surrendered to Jewish forces.

In the years following Israel's creation, Bat Yam grew dramatically due to mass immigration and gained city status in 1958. A small Hasidic enclave of Bobover Hasidim, known as Kiryat Bobov, was established in 1959. The city gained a sizeable community of Jews from Turkey (est. 23% of the population). Bat Yam again experienced a period of rapid growth in the early 1980s to the late 1990s with the mass immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, and Ethiopia. There is also a fairly large Arab community in Bat Yam, both Muslim and Christian many of whom relocated from Jaffa. The vast majority of Vietnamese-Israelis or Vietnamese people of Israeli origin, live in Bat Yam.