David Tuviyahu (Hebrew: דוד טוביהו; 20 November 1898 – 1975) was an Israeli politician and trade unionist who served as the first mayor of the city of Beersheba after the establishment of the State of Israel.
[2] There he worked in construction in the north of the country, including on the road between Afula and Nazareth, and was a member of Kibbutz Geva in the Jezreel Valley for seven years.
At various times, Tuviyahu worked as a foreman and as a manager for Solel Boneh, a construction company owned by the Histadrut trade union.
The small settlement together with its surroundings had been depopulated of most of its Arab inhabitants during the Arab–Israeli War, particularly after the battle of Beersheba, and was granted to Israel by the 1949 Armistice Agreements, after which it was elevated to a municipality.
From a small town in the Negev desert, Tuviyahu oversaw the development and rapid expansion of the city, including its connection to the electricity grid and the national road network, mass housing programs for the many new immigrants (particularly from North Africa) who were living in nearby tent cities, and the construction of the Central Hospital of the Negev (now Soroka Medical Center), inaugurated in October 1959.