ʿArad, town, southern Israel, in the northeast Negev, named for the biblical Arad, the ruins of which are visible at Tel ʿArad, about 5 1/2 miles (9 km) east-northeast. The book of Numbers (21:1–3) tells how the Canaanite king of ʿArad fought the Israelites during the exodus from Egypt, but his cities were “utterly destroyed” by Israel’s armies. The city’s name appears on the Temple of Amon, al-Karnak, Egypt, in the triumphal inscription of Pharaoh Sheshonk I (biblical Shishak), first ruler of the 22nd dynasty (reigned c. 945–924 bc).
The first modern attempt to settle the site was made in 1921 by veterans of the Zion Mule Corps, a Jewish unit of the British army in World War I. It failed because of the lack of freshwater. ʿArad is now supplied with water by a branch of the Yarqon-Negev pipeline. The present settlement was founded in 1961 and is a residential community for the employees of the Dead Sea Works at nearby Sedom. The hinterland of ʿArad has valuable mineral resources—in addition to the minerals of the Dead Sea, there are phosphate deposits at Zefaʿ, 10 miles (16 km) south, and natural-gas fields at Rosh Zohar, 3 miles (5 km) southeast. Chemical processing and textile manufacturing are the town’s principal industries. Pop. (2006 est.) 23,400.