Rehovot was established in 1890 by pioneers of the
First Aliyah on the coastal plain near a site called
Khirbat Deiran, an "abandoned or sparsely populated" estate, which now lies in the center of the built-up area of the city. According to Marom, Deiran offered "a convenient launching pad for early land purchase initiatives which shaped the pattern of Jewish settlement until the beginning of the British Mandate". In March 1892, a dispute over pasture rights erupted between the residents of Rehovot and the neighboring village of
Zarnuqa, which took two years to resolve. Another dispute broke out with the Suteriya
Bedouin tribe, which had been cultivating some of the land as tenant farmers. According to
Moshe Smilansky, one of the early settlers of Rehovot, the Bedouins had received compensation for the land, but refused to vacate it. In 1893, they attacked the
moshava. Through the intervention of a respected Arab sheikh, a compromise was reached, with the Bedouins receiving an additional sum of money, which they used to dig a well. In 1890, the region was an uncultivated wasteland with no trees, houses or water. The moshava's houses were initially built along two parallel streets: Yaakov Street and Benjamin Street, before later expanding, and
vineyards,
almond orchards and
citrus groves were planted, but the inhabitants grappled with agricultural failures, plant diseases, and marketing problems. committee that founded the city, Eliezer Kaplan on left in 1892 The first citrus grove was planted by Zalman Minkov in 1904. Minkov's grove, surrounded by a wall, included a guard house, stables, a packing plant, and an irrigation system in which groundwater was pumped from a large well in the inner courtyard. The well was 23 meters deep, the height of an eight-story building, and over six meters in diameter. The water was channeled via an aqueduct to an irrigation pool, and from there to a network of ditches dug around the bases of the trees. In 1908, the Workman's Union (
Hapoel Hazair) organized a group of 300
Yemenite immigrants then living in the region of Jerusalem and Jaffa, bringing them to work as farmers in the colonies of Rishon-le-Zion and Rehovot. Only a few dozen
Yemenite families had settled in Rehovot by 1908. They built houses for themselves in a plot given to them at the south end of the town, which became known as Sha'araim. between the colonists and guards of Rehovot, and the Arab rural population, is considered by historians as a milestone in Zionist–Arab relations in late Ottoman Palestine. The incident, which started over simple accusation of theft of grapes from a Jewish-owned vineyard, became much more than a local incident, left one Arab and two Jews dead and resulted in tremendous hostility between the two sides. There are various narratives available to researchers today, including Jewish, Arabic sources and external sources. It is difficult to determine whose narrative is closer to historical reality, or to find out who started the fight and who is to be blamed. This incident illustrates the difficult task facing historians in analyzing the late Ottoman Palestine, the period of the early Zionist–Arab encounter and conflict. It is alleged that this was the moment when a previously peaceful co-existence among Jews and Arabs, united under the Ottoman Empire, instantly became an "us vs. them" divisiveness that has prevailed ever since. In February 1914,
Rothschild visited Rehovot during the fourth of his five visits to the Land of Israel. That year, Rehovot had a population of around 955.
British Mandate In 1920, the
Rehovot Railway Station was opened, which greatly boosted the local citrus fruit industry. A few packing houses were built near the station to enable the fruit to be sent by railway to the rest of the country and to the port of
Jaffa for export to Europe. According to a
census conducted in 1922 by the
British Mandate authorities, Rehovot had a population of 1,242 inhabitants, consisting of 1,241 Jews and 1 Muslim, increasing in 1931
census to 3,193 inhabitants, in 833 houses. In 1924, the
British Army contracted the
Palestine Electric Company for wired electric power. The contract allowed the Electric Company to extend the grid beyond the original geographical limits that had been projected by the concession it was given. The high-voltage line that exceeded the limits of the original concession ran along some major towns and agricultural settlements, offering extended connections to the Jewish towns of
Rishon Le-Zion,
Ness Ziona and Rehovot (in spite of their proximity to the high-voltage line, the Arab towns of
Ramla and
Lod remained unconnected). In 1931, the first workers
moshav,
Kfar Marmorek, was built on lands which were acquired from the village of
Zarnuqa by the
Jewish National Fund in 1926, and ten
Yemenite Jewish families which were evicted from
Kinneret were resettled there. Later, they were joined by thirty-five other families from Sha'araim. Today, they are both suburbs of Rehovot. The agricultural research station that opened in Rehovot in 1932 later became the Department of Agriculture of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1933, a juice factory was built. In 1934,
Chaim Weizmann established the Sieff Institute, which later became the
Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1937, Weizmann built his home on the land purchased adjacent to the Sieff Institute. The house later served as the presidential residence after Weizmann became president in 1948. Weizmann and his wife are buried on the grounds of the institute. In 1945, Rehovot had a population of 10,020, and in 1948, it had grown to 12,500. The suburb of Rehovot,
Kefar Marmorek, had a population of 500 Jews in 1948.
State of Israel in Rehovot in 2008 On 29 February 1948, the
Lehi blew up the Cairo to Haifa train shortly after it left Rehovot, killing 29 British soldiers and injuring 35. Lehi said the bombing was in retaliation for the
Ben Yehuda Street bombing a week earlier.
The Scotsman reported that both Weizmann's home and the Agricultural Institute were damaged in the explosion, although the sites were away. On 28 March 1948, Arabs attacked a Jewish convoy near Rehovot. In 1950, Rehovot, which had a population of about 18,000, was declared a city. In the immediate years following the establishment of
Israel, the
Zarnuqa ma'abara (now named
Kiryat Moshe) was established on the Southern side of Rehovot to house Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and
Arab lands. On the Southwest, the neighborhood of
Kfar Gevirol (now named
Ibn Gevirol, named after
Solomon ibn Gabirol, 11th Century Sephardi Jewish Philosopher) was founded on lands of the depopulated Palestinian village of
Al-Qubayba. Over the years,
Kiryat Moshe expanded over the lands of the depopulated Palestinian village of
Zarnuqa. The mosque of the village, while abandoned, still stands. On the Southeast the neighborhood of Ramat Aharon were established. The city has since then expanded in all directions, geographically surrounding but not including the Kibbutz of
Kvutzat Shiller and the Moshav of
Gibton. ==Demographics==