At the north east corner of Eli Cohen and Yitzhak Rabin is a large field, partially overgrown with weeds, with the remains of a stone building in the corner. If it were not for the blue historical sign standing on the corner, you would likely walk by the field without paying any attention to the remnants of the building. The sign on the corner reads:
Ibrahim Pasha’s well
In 1832, Ibrahim Pasha, the governor of the land, sought to establish a new city and called it “Ascalon al-Jadida” – “New Ashkelon”. However, circumstances forced him to leave the land and he did not have time to complete the process of establishing the city he had planned.
The French explorer Victor Gran, who toured the area about twenty years later, described the remains found in these words: “A wonderful, wide and deep well, built of well-designed ashlar stones and above it a handsome pavilion covered with a dome and open to the four winds of the sky …”. The eastern wing of the site is a relic of that historic well.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Amitsur orchard was planted here (the initials of the partners: Amram Ben-Zvi, Moshe (Musa) Shimoni, Yosek Zvi and their wives). The well was used to irrigate the orchard and provided water to the municipal network until the 1980s.
