Ancient town in Israel in the northern Negev, where Abraham dug a well and planted a tamarisk tree and where the biblical tribes of Israel gathered. Currently the site of Ben-Gurion University. In Roman and Byzantine times it was a prosperous station on the route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Under Arab rule it declined, and during the 1948 Israeli War of Liberation it was a market town of about 3,000 Arabs, who fled after the Israeli occupation. Since then, it has developed into a bustling town of 375,000 residents, and has become the administrative center of the Negev. To this day, one can still see Bedouins riding their camels near Beersheba.