Without the vision, engineering skill and political acumen of a Jewish Siberian mining engineer called Moshe Novomeysky, the Palestine Potash Company would not have come into existence and become the main exporter during the British Mandate and later an important exporter of potash and bromine for the State of Israel. Moshe saw mineral extraction at the Dead Sea as part of Zionist industrial nation building and economic self-sufficiency. It is appropriate, therefore, that the visitors center tells the story of Moshe Novomeysky’s efforts through the explanations on screen of his grandson.

 

This Siberian-born engineer first arrived at the Dead Sea shores in 1911 and began his experiments and political endeavors. He received a British Mandate concession to extract the potash, bromine and magnesium from the Dead Sea in 1929. He developed the evaporation-based extraction methods still in use today and showed that large scale differential precipitation of the various minerals in evaporation pools was technically and economically feasible.

 

As managing director, he promoted a two-site strategy. Early production and workforce housing was begun in Kalia at the northern end of the Dead Sea, and because of its limited size he also planned and instituted long-term expansion at Sodom at the southern end of the Dead Sea.

During the War of Independence, in May 1948 Kalia became isolated and vulnerable and with Jordan’s Arab Legion advancing, the Jewish residents and workers were evacuated by boat across the Dead Sea. The Kalia plant thus fell under Jordanian control. Sodom, deep in the Negev desert, was cut off from the rest of Israel by land. Workers and Palmach/IDF units defended the site, supplied by difficult desert convoys and occasional air drops. Despite its isolation, the plant did not fall and it remained in Jewish hands throughout the war. Sodom’s survival ensured that Israel retained access to its potash and bromine, which were vital export and strategic materials. With Kalia lost, Israel rebuilt and reorganized the industry entirely around Sodom. Its retention also strengthened Israel’s claim to the southern Dead Sea region up to Ein Gedi.

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The company was reconstituted as the Dead Sea Works Ltd., and it eventually became state-owned and was later privatized. Novomeysky, aging and disillusioned by the loss of Kalia, withdrew from active leadership. The company is now a core subsidiary of Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL).

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The shallow southern part of the Dead Sea has been converted into large evaporation pools and water is pumped from the deep northern part of the lake via a channel. Another channel allows the processed water to flow back to the northern section by gravity.

The ecological sequelae of this large-scale process are, of course, immense, especially in a lake that is already losing water from an almost absent input of river water and continuing sun evaporation.