Located in the north-western Negev desert near the eastern border with the Gaza Strip, it falls under the jurisdiction of Eshkol Regional Council.

Its founders were members of the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed movement, who had been preparing in Maoz Haim, as well as some Hebrew scouts and a group of Iraqi Jews who had survived the Farhud and trekked across the desert to Mandatory Palestine in 1947.

[4] The Jewish National Fund reported that for months the kibbutz was completely isolated, "but the settlers held their ground until the liberation of the Negev in October 1948.

Bret Stephens writes: Be’eri was well known for its pro-peace sympathies: It had a special fund to give financial help to Gazans who came to the kibbutz on work permits, and kibbutzniks would often volunteer to drive sick Palestinians to an oncology center in southern Israel.

[7]On 7 October 2023, Hamas militants infiltrated the kibbutz, took an unknown number of Israelis hostage and killed more than 100 people in their coordinated attacks across Israel that initiated the Israel-Hamas war.

Sofie Berzon MacKie (born January 1984) visual artist, curator and director of the Be'eri Contemporary Art Gallery