Beit Oren - History

History

In 1934 a single Arab house stood on the site of what is today Beit Oren. It was purchased with the surrounding lands, settled by a group of 15 Jewish workers, and served as a watch tower and camp. The workers intended to build a city and name it Yaarot HaCarmel, but a number were killed when the site was attacked during the 1936 Arab Revolt.

Kibbutz Beit Oren was founded in 1939 by immigrants from Poland and Russia, part of the Hebrew Socialist Youth movement. Over time these were joined by other groups from Dror and Aliyat HaNoar, as well as by a group from Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael.

Prior to Israel's independence, the kibbutz served the Haganah as a Palmach base for underground activities against the British. On 9 October 1945, a Palmach unit set out from Beit Oren to free 208 illegal immigrants detained at the Atlit detainee camp. After overcoming the guards, the freed immigrants were led past Beit Oren to Kibbutz Yagur, where they were hidden from the British. The attack was the first anti-British action undertaken by the Palmach.

During the 1980s Beit Oren went practically bankrupt, leaving the senior members without any income or means of subsistence, in a great deal of debt and with commitments for which they had no way to cover. The kibbutz movement stopped financial support to the kibbutz, then in severe economic and social crisis, and suggested that veteran members leave. The United Kibbutz Movement allowed a group of young individuals to change the kibbutz fundamentally. In 1999, eight members of Beit Oren, applied to the High Court of Justice, to order the registrar of cooperative societies, to abolish the classification of Beit Oren as a kibbutz and classify it as a different kind of cooperative society. It later underwent privatization, shifting from a kibbutz to a community village.