Soroka University Medical Center (, HaMerkaz HaRefu'i Soroka), part of the Clalit Health Services Group, is the general hospital of Beersheba, Israel, it serves as the central hospital of the region and provides medical services to approximately one million residents of the South, from Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon to Eilat. Soroka is the largest general hospital in Israel, with 1,173 hospital beds, and it is spread over an area of in the center of Beer-Sheva. Soroka provides medical care to members of all populations in the region, including Negev Bedouins and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is a teaching hospital affiliated with the faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev whose campus is adjacent to the hospital. History Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Medical Corps established a temporary military hospital in one of the Ottoman government buildings in Beersheva. A year later, the hospital was transferred to a British government compound, where it was run by the Hadassah Medical Association and named after Dr. Chaim Yassky. In 1949, Clalit Health Fund of the Hebrew Workers in Eretz Israel opened a clinic in the city to serve citizens who were members of the Histadrut. This clinic required hospital services for continued treatment. The nearest hospital was the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, but it was relatively far away, and patients had to travel and endure the poor road conditions of the time until they received treatment. In 1950, Beersheva was declared a civic authority, with the result that thousands of immigrants went to settle there. With the increase in the number of residents, the existing small hospital was unable to answer the needs of the population. Hadassah expressed willingness to expand its facilities, but due to budgetary constraints caused by the construction of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem they were not able to expand the hospital within a reasonable amount of time. David Ben-Gurion, with his national approach, thought that the government should establish a hospital in the Negev and that it should not be established by Hadassah or the Histadrut, but the Health Ministry had no funds to invest in this effort. David Tuviyahu, who served as mayor of the city of Beersheva, joined the effort to establish a larger, more spacious and modern hospital. For this purpose, he met with various individuals, among them Moshe Soroka, chairman of the Clalit Health Services.