Nahariya

Nahariya (Hebrew: נַהֲרִיָּה) is the northernmost coastal city in Israel. In 2023 the city had a population of 68,316.

The city was founded in 1935 by Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.

Nahariya takes its name from the stream of Ga'aton (river is נהר‎ nahar in Hebrew), which bisects it.

The ruins of a 3,400-year-old Bronze Age citadel were found in the coastal city of Nahariya near the beach on Balfour Street, at a site known to archaeologists as Khirbet Kabarsa. The citadel was an administrative center serving the mariners who sailed along the Mediterranean coast. There is evidence of commercial and cultural relations with Cyprus and the rest of the Mediterranean region. The fortress was destroyed four times by conflagration and rebuilt each time.^{[citation needed]}

A church from the Byzantine period, dedicated to St. Lazarus, was excavated in the 1970s. It was destroyed by fire, probably at the time of the Persian invasion in 614.

In 1934, work began to found Nahariya as an agricultural village by a company limited by shares and headed by the agronomist Dr. Selig Eugen Soskin (1873–1959), the civil engineer Joseph Loewy (1885–1949), the financial expert Heinrich Cohn (1895–1976) and the engineer Simon Reich (1883–1941). The company acquired an area of land by purchase from the Arab landowner family Toueini. After ameliorisation and parcelling, the plots were offered to new German Jewish immigrants who had escaped from Nazi persecution. The first residents, two German immigrant couples, permanently settled in Nahariya on February 10, 1935, which is now considered the official founding date of Nahariya. During the same year each couple had one child, the first children born in Nahariya. By the end of 1935 approximately 40 pioneers had settled in Nahariya. Settlement continued in 1936 and four more children were born there that year. While the first settlers lived in huts, the settlement was rapidly developed as houses were built and trees and gardens planted. The residents also took to raising chickens.

After an accumulation of economic and climatic problems the residents soon realized that agriculture was impractical and chose to focus on tourism and the food industry. Nahariya was turned into a European-style resort town, taking advantage of the natural surroundings and beaches, and new inns were opened. Two prominent food manufacturers also set up shop: the Strauss company was founded as a commercial dairy by German immigrants in Nahariya, and the Soglowek family, which settled in Nahariya in 1937, opened a prominent butcher shop, and developed the "Nahariya sausage". During the British Mandate of Palestine, many British officers coming from Khartoum stopped in Nahariya.^{[citation needed]}

In 1948 when Israel was founded Nahariya had a population of 1,700. It became a development town in the 1950s after a ma'abara established nearby was integrated. The town hence became a home to many Jewish refugees from North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. It had a population of 9,800 in 1955, which had increased to 23,800 in 1972. During the 1990s, the city absorbed a significant number of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nahariya experienced a construction boom.^{[citation needed]}