Kiryat Gat

Kiryat Gat (Hebrew: קריית גת, lit. 'City of Gat') also spelled Qiryat Gat, is a city in the Southern District of Israel. It lies 56 km (35 miles) south of Tel Aviv, 43 km (27 mi) north of Beersheba, and 68 km (42 mi) west southwest of Jerusalem. In 2022 it had a population of 64,437. The city hosts one of the most advanced semiconductor fabrication plants in the world, Intel's Fab 28 plant producing 7 nm process chips.
Kiryat Gat was mistakenly named for Gath, one of the five major cities of the Philistines. In Hebrew, "gat" means "winepress". In the 1950s, archaeologists found ruins at a nearby tell named Tel Erani and identified it as the Philistine city of Gath. Later archeologists proved this to be incorrect, but not before Kiryat Gat had been named in 1954. It proved too difficult to subsequently change the city’s name. This event cooled earlier enthusiasm for restoring biblical names more widely across the region.
The location most favored for Gath now is Tel es-Safi, thirteen kilometers (8.1 miles) to the northeast.
Kiryat Gat was founded in 1954, initially as a ma'abara. The following year it was established as a development town by 18 families from Morocco. It was founded just west of the ruins of the Palestinian Arab village of Iraq al-Manshiyya The former location of Iraq al-Manshiyya is now within the built-up area of Kiryat Gat. By 1992, Kiryat Gat had grown and spread also onto the land that formerly belonged to the village of Al-Faluja.
The population of Kiryat Gat rose from 4,400 inhabitants in 1958 to 17,000 in 1969, mostly Jewish immigrants from North Africa. The economy was initially based on processing the agricultural produce of the Lachish region, such as cotton and wool. In December 1972, Kiryat Gat's municipal status was upgraded and it became Israel's 31st city.
During the 1990s, the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel brought many new residents to the town and its population grew to 42,500 by 1995. The development of the Rabin industrial zone on the eastern edge of the city, and the opening of Highway 6 further improved the economy of the city.
In 2012, the ethnic makeup of the city was 93.8 percent Jewish. In its early years, Kiryat Gat was populated mainly by Jews of Sephardi/Mizrahi origin. Since the mass immigration of Soviet Jews, approximately one third of the inhabitants hail from the former Soviet Union.
The Polgat textile factory was the main employer in the town until it closed in the 1990s. In 1999, Intel opened a chip fabrication plant, known as Fab 18, to produce Pentium 4 chips and flash memories. Intel received a grant of $525 million from the Israeli government to build the plant. In February 2006, the cornerstone was laid for Intel's second Kiryat Gat plant, Fab 28. Despite this, Kiryat Gat has one of Israel's highest unemployment rates. In 2021, Intel announced a $10 billion investment in new manufacturing in Kiryat Gat.
The headquarters and small-arms (guns) manufacturing facility of Israeli Weapons Industries is now located in Kiryat Gat.
Kiryat Gat is served by the Kiryat Gat Railway Station on the Tel Aviv - Be'er Sheva inter-city line of Israel Railways. Kiryat Gat is situated between two major highways, Highway 40 to the west of the town and Highway 6.
Kiryat Gat has 25 schools with an enrollment of 10,676. Of these schools, 18 are elementary schools with a student population of 5,498, and 13 are high schools with a student population of 5,178. In 2001, 54.7% of Kiryat Gat's 12th grade students graduated with a matriculation certificate. Kiryat Gat has a Pedagogic Center, science centers, a computerized library and a center devoted to industry, art and technology. In 2012, a high school student from Kiryat Gat won first prize in the First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics competition.
Kiryat Gat is twinned with: