Kiryat Bialik Colony

Kiryat Bialik is a colony located in the Haifa district of occupied Palestine. The city was established on July 18, 1934, during the Fifth Aliyah. It is one of the five Krayot suburbs situated north of Haifa. In 2022, the settler population reached 44,620. In 1924, Avraham and Sabina Katz, who had emigrated to Mandatory Palestine from the Kingdom of Romania, became the first modern Zionists to settle in the Zevulun Valley along Haifa Bay. Their farm was destroyed by Palestinian resistance fighters in 1929. Kiryat Bialik was founded in July 1934 by a group of German Jewish immigrants who received a land plot from the Jewish National Fund. The population mostly consisted of professionals such as doctors, engineers, and lawyers, living in private houses with gardens. During World War II, Kiryat Bialik was subjected to bombing due to its proximity to oil refineries in Haifa. In the early 1950s, the “Ir Hamifrats” transit camp (also known as Kurdani A) was established, accommodating approximately 100 immigrant families from India. The transit camp was incorporated into Kiryat Bialik in 1960. During the Second Lebanon War, several rockets fell on the colony, causing property damage and injuring several settlers. On September 22, 2024, during the fourth wave of rocket fire from Hezbollah, Kiryat Bialik was hit, resulting in injuries to three settlers and damage to two houses. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the ethnic composition of Kiryat Bialik in 2008 was entirely Jewish, with no significant Arab population. The city ranks medium to high on the socio-economic scale (7 out of 10). Many Zionist immigrants from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, and Argentina have settled in Kiryat Bialik.