Gateway to the East

Gateway to the East | Restoring Beit She’an’s Status as an Inland Port City

Throughout history, Beit She’an flourished thanks to its geography, abundant in resources, and its location along the land route of the Eastern Mediterranean. From this it gained the exchange of trade, technology, and culture across the Fertile Crescent, and the city became an international meeting point. Following the 1948 war, and the division of the valley between the two banks of the Jordan, the city was evacuated of all its inhabitants and resettled as a development town in the new State of Israel. The Hijaz Railway, once the engine of growth, was shut down, the water sources that crossed the city were diverted and polluted, and Beit She’an underwent a transformation, from the capital of the valley into a hostile border town at the periphery. Its decline persisted until the signing of the peace agreement with Jordan. Since then, Beit She’an has once again begun to emerge as a key point in regional diplomatic discourse and is now reappearing as part of development plans on a global scale. These plans are promoted as potentially bringing economic promise to the region. However, they could also risk bypassing the valley, reinforcing its peripheral status, deepening its economic and cultural isolation from the wider region, and causing further environmental damage.

Do today’s geopolitical shifts open a window for cross-border cooperation? one that would allow Beit She’an to reclaim its regional status that was taken from it? Its restoration as the capital of the valley, and its framing as an inland port city between nations and cultures, could encourage “diffusion” across the Jordan, and once again contribute to strengthening connection and stability on both the local and international levels. Purposeful leveraging of these development-plans can provide the economic forces necessary for its renewal, transforming it from a dependent peripheral town into an urban center that produces knowledge, culture, and technology.

The project proposes the restoration of the historic center as the focal point of the city’s regeneration: to return the flow of the Kibbutzim Stream into it, and to establish there the last Valley Railway station before the border crossing eastwards. In this way, the city could lead the change and foster the flourishing of the southern Jordan Valley, allowing Beit She’an to once again become part of a network of cities weaving connection and prosperity across the Middle East.