Beit Eshel

According to the Jewish National Fund, the name means "House of the Tamarisk" and refers to the tamarisks planted by the patriarch Abraham at Beersheba. ==History==

The pioneers of Beit Eshel were Holocaust survivors from Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. 8 men and women were killed, many buildings destroyed or damaged, and the Egyptians continued to fire at the village sporadically. In October 1948, with the IDF capture of the city of Beersheba, Beit Eshel was liberated. However, the settlers of Beit Eshel couldn't cope with the large scale destruction, decided to abandon the settlement and to establish a new moshav named HaYogev in the Jezreel Valley. File:מראה בבית-אשל בנגב-JNF012095.jpeg|Beit Eshel 1945 File:Beit Eshel ii.jpg|Beit Eshel after recapture by the Israeli army. 1948 Heritage site In 1960, a group of Beersheva residents established a volunteer society to preserve Beit Eshel as a national heritage site. ==Archaeology==

Excavations at Beit Eshel in 2003 by a joint team of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Archaeological Division of Ben Gurion University of the Negev unearthed Ghassulian flint sickle blades from the fifth millennium BCE, suggesting that the site was a Ghassulian (Chalcolithic) flint workshop. ==See also==