Giv'atayim Colony

Giv'atayim is a settlement considered a city within what is called Israel, located east of Tel Aviv. It is part of the urban area known as Gush Dan. Giv'atayim was founded in 1922 by pioneers of the Second Aliyah. The city's name derives from the “hills” on which it was established: Borochov Hill and Kozlovsky Hill. Kozlovsky is the highest hill in the Gush Dan area, standing at 85 meters (279 feet) above sea level. During the 1930s, the settlement expanded and today occupies four hills: Borochov, Kozlovsky, Po'alei HaRakevet ("Railway Workers"), and Rambam Hill. The modern settlement was established on April 2, 1922, by a group of 22 pioneers of the Second Aliyah led by David Shneiderman. The group purchased 300 dunams (300,000 square meters / 3,200,000 square feet) of land on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, which became the Borochov neighborhood (Shikunat Borochov), the first workers’ neighborhood in the country. It was named after Dov Ber Borochov, the founder of the Poale Zion labor party. Later, 70 more families joined the group, receiving smaller plots. The land was bought with their own savings but was voluntarily transferred to the Jewish National Fund, which organized Zionist settlement at the time, in line with the socialist beliefs of the pioneers. Shikunat Borochov is credited with several innovations in the early Jewish settlement movement, including establishing the first cooperative grocery store (Tzarchaniya, “The Consumer”), which operated in the same location until the 1980s. Over time, other neighborhoods developed: Shenkina (1936; named after Menachem Shenkin), Giv'at Rambam (1933; named after Moses Maimonides), Kiryat Yosef (1934; named after the biblical figure), and Arlozorov (1936; named after Chaim Arlozorov). All these neighborhoods were merged to form a local council in August 1942. The settlement was also established on the lands of the depopulated Palestinian village of Al-Khayriyya in the Jaffa district in April 1948. As of 2022, its population numbered 61,924 settlers. Sources: Due to the scarcity of Arabic sources, Hebrew sources were used: the settlement’s official website in Hebrew / Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. The village of Al-Khayriyya from the Palestine Remembered website.