Palestine grid
The Palestine grid was the geographic coordinate system used in Mandatory Palestine. The system was chosen by the Survey Department of the Government of Palestine in 1922; the projection used was the Cassini-Soldner projection. The central meridian was chosen as that passing through a marker on the hill of Mar Elias Monastery south of Jerusalem; the false origin of the grid was placed 100 km to the south and west of the Ali el-Muntar hill that overlooks Gaza city. The unit length for the grid was the kilometre. At the time the grid was established, there was no intention of mapping the lower reaches of the Negev Desert, but this did not remain true; the fact that those southern regions would have negative north-south coordinate became a source of confusion, solved by adding 1000 to the northern coordinate in that case. For some military purposes, 1000 was added to the north-south coordinates of all locations, so that they ranged uniformly from about 900 to about 1300. During World War II, a Military Palestine Grid was used, similar to the Palestine Grid but used the transverse Mercator projection.
The difference between the two projections was only a few meters. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Palestine grid continued to be used under the name of the Israel Grid or the Israeli Cassini Soldner grid, now called the "Old Israeli Grid", with 1000km added to the northing component to make the north-south range continuous, it was replaced by the Israeli Transverse Mercator grid in 1994. The Palestine grid is still used to specify locations in the historical and archaeological literature; the basic way of specifying a location on the Palestine grid is to write the east-west coordinate followed by the north-south coordinate using 3 digits each. For example, the Dome of the Rock is at 172132; this specifies the location within one kilometer. If more precision is required, extra digits can be added to each coordinate. Many authors separate the two coordinates with punctuation for readability purposes, for example 172-132 or 172/132. Mugnier, Clifford J.. Grids & Datums; the State of Israel, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 66, 2000, pp. 915-917, 933
Crusader states
The Crusader states were a number of 12th- and 13th-century feudal Christian states created by Western European crusaders in Asia Minor and the Holy Land, during the Northern Crusades in the eastern Baltic area. The name refers to other territorial gains made by medieval Christendom against Muslim and pagan adversaries; the Crusader states in the Levant, collectively known as Outremer, were the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the County of Edessa. The people of the Crusader states were referred to as "Latins", a common demonym among the followers of the Latin Church as opposed to indigenous followers of Eastern Christianity. Beginning in the 7th century, Muslim rulers began expanding their territories into Christian Roman/Byzantine lands, conquering Egypt and the Levant, taking over all of North Africa, much of Southwest Asia, most of the Iberian Peninsula; the Eastern Romans, or Byzantines recovered lost territory on numerous occasions but lost all but Anatolia and parts of Thrace and the Balkans.
In the West, the Roman Catholic kingdoms of northern Iberia launched campaigns known as the Reconquista to reconquer the peninsula from the Arabized Berbers known as Moors. The conquered Iberian principalities are not customarily called Crusader states, except for the Kingdom of Valencia, despite fitting the criteria. Malcolm Barber, a British scholar of medieval history, indicates that, in the Crusader state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem the Holy Sepulchre was added to in the 7th century and rebuilt in 1022, "after a previous collapse". "In 691–2 Caliph Abd al Malik had built a great dome over the rock here, a place sacred to all three great religions". In 1071, the Byzantine army was defeated by the Muslim Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert, resulting in the loss of most of Asia Minor; the situation was a serious threat to the future of the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire. The Emperor sent a plea to the Pope in Rome to send military aid to restore the lost territories to Christian rule.
The result was a series of western European military campaigns into the eastern Mediterranean, known as the Crusades. For the Byzantines, the crusaders had no allegiance to the Byzantine Emperor and established their own states in the conquered regions, including the heart of the Byzantine Empire; the first four Crusader states were created in the Levant after the First Crusade: The first Crusader state, the County of Edessa, was founded in 1098 and lasted until 1150. The Principality of Antioch, founded in 1098, lasted until 1268; the Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded in 1099, lasted until 1291. There were many vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the four major lordships being: The Principality of Galilee The County of Jaffa and Ascalon The Lordship of Oultrejordain The Lordship of Sidon The County of Tripoli, founded in 1104, with Tripoli itself conquered in 1109, lasted until 1289. After the First Crusade's capture of Jerusalem and victory at Ascalon the majority of the Crusaders considered their pilgrimage complete and returned to Europe.
Godfrey was left with only 300 knights and 2,000 infantry to defend the territory won in the Eastern Mediterranean. Only Tancred of the crusader princes remained with the aim of establishing his own lordship. At this point the Franks held two great Syrian cities. Jerusalem remained economically sterile despite the advantages of being the centre of administration of church and state and benefitting from streams of pilgrims. Consolidation in the first half of the 12th-century established four Crusader states: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli; these states were the first examples of "Europe overseas". They are known as outremer, from the French outre-mer. Based in the ports of Acre and Tyre. Separate from the Frankish nobles or burgesses, the communes were autonomous political entities linked to their countries of origin; this gave the inhabitants the ability to monopolise foreign trade and all banking and shipping in the Crusader states.
Every opportunity to extend trade privileges was taken. One such example was the case of the Venetian Doge receiving one third of Tyre, its territories and exemption from all taxes after participating in the successful 1124 siege of the city. However, despite all efforts the two ports were unable to replace Alexandria and Constantinople as the primary centres of commerce in the region. Instead, the communes competed with each other to maintain economic advantage. Power derived from the support of the communards' native cities rather than their number, which never reached more than several hundred. Through this, by the middle of the 13th-century, the rulers of the communes were required to recognise the authority of the crusaders and divided Acre into a number of fortified miniature republics; the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia had its origins before the Crusades, but was granted the status of a kingdom by Pope Innocent III, became westernized by the Lusignan dynasty. During the Third Crusade, the Crusaders founded the Kingdom of Cyprus.
Richard I of England conquered Cyprus on his way to Holy Land. He subsequently sold the island to the Knights Templar who were unab
Mamluk
Mamluk is an Arabic designation for slaves. The term is most used to refer to non-muslimslave soldiers and Muslim rulers of slave origin. More it refers to: Ghaznavids of Greater Khorasan Khwarazmian dynasty in Transoxiana Mamluk dynasty Mamluk Sultanate Bahri dynasty Burji dynasty Mamluk dynasty The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military caste in Egypt in the Middle Ages, which developed from the ranks of slave soldiers; these were enslaved Turkic peoples, Egyptian Copts, Circassians and Georgians. Many Mamluks were of Balkan origin; the "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior class, was of great political importance. Over time, Mamluks became a powerful military knightly caste in various societies that were controlled by Muslim rulers. In Egypt, but in the Levant and India, mamluks held political and military power. In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as emirs or beys. Most notably, mamluk factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, controlled it as the Mamluk Sultanate.
The Mamluk Sultanate famously defeated the Ilkhanate at the Battle of Ain Jalut. They had earlier fought the western European Christian Crusaders in 1154–1169 and 1213–1221 driving them out of Egypt and the Levant. In 1302 the mamluks formally expelled the last Crusaders from the Levant, ending the era of the Crusades. While mamluks were purchased as property, their status was above ordinary slaves but they were not allowed to carry weapons or perform certain tasks. In places such as Egypt, from the Ayyubid dynasty to the time of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, mamluks were considered to be "true lords" and "true warriors", with social status above the general population in Egypt and the Levant. In a sense they were like enslaved mercenaries; the origins of the mamluk system are disputed. Historians agree that an entrenched military caste such as the mamluks appeared to develop in Islamic societies beginning with the ninth-century Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad; when in the ninth century has not been determined.
Up until the 1990s, it was believed that the earliest mamluks were known as Ghilman and were bought by the Abbasid caliphs al-Mu'tasim. By the end of the 9th century, such warrior slaves had become the dominant element in the military. Conflict between these ghilman and the population of Baghdad prompted the caliph al-Mu'tasim to move his capital to the city of Samarra, but this did not succeed in calming tensions; the caliph al-Mutawakkil was assassinated by some of these slave-soldiers in 861. Since the early 21st century, historians suggest that there was a distinction between the mamluk system and the ghilman system, in Samarra, which did not have specialized training and was based on pre-existing Central Asian hierarchies. Adult slaves and freemen both served as warriors in the ghilman system; the mamluk system developed after the return of the caliphate to Baghdad in the 870's. It included the systematic training of young slaves in military and martial skills; the Mamluk system is considered to have been a small-scale experiment of al-Muwaffaq, to combine the slaves' efficiency as warriors with improved reliability.
This recent interpretation seems to have been accepted. After the fragmentation of the Abbasid Empire, military slaves, known as either mamluks or ghilman, were used throughout the Islamic world as the basis of military power; the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt had forcibly taken adolescent male Armenians, Turks and Copts from their families in order to be trained as slave soldiers. They formed the bulk of their military, the rulers selected prized slaves to serve in their administration; the powerful vizier Badr al-Jamali, for example, was a mamluk from Armenia. In Iran and Iraq, the Buyid dynasty used Turkic slaves throughout their empire; the rebel al-Basasiri was a mamluk who ushered in Seljuq dynastic rule in Baghdad after attempting a failed rebellion. When the Abbasids regained military control over Iraq, they relied on the ghilman as their warriors. Under Saladin and the Ayyubids of Egypt, the power of the mamluks increased and they claimed the sultanate in 1250, ruling as the Mamluk Sultanate.
Throughout the Islamic world, rulers continued to use enslaved warriors until the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire's devşirme, or "gathering" of young slaves for the Janissaries, lasted until the 17th century. Regimes based on mamluk power thrived in such Ottoman provinces as the Levant and Egypt until the 19th century. Under the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo, Mamluks were purchased while still young males, they were raised in the barracks of the Citadel of Cairo. Because of their isolated social status and their austere military training, they were trusted to be loyal to their rulers; when their training was completed, they were discharged, but remained attached to the patron who had purchased them. Mamluks relied on the help of their patron for career advancement, the patron's reputation and power depended on his recruits. A Mamluk was "bound by a strong esprit de corps to his peers in the same household."Mamluks lived within their garrisons and spent their time with each
Acre, Israel
Acre, known to locals as Akko or Akka, is a city in the coastal plain region of the Northern District of Israel. The city occupies an important location, sitting in a natural harbour at the extremity of Haifa Bay on the coast of the Mediterranean's Levantine Sea. Aside from coastal trading, it was an important waypoint on the region's coastal road and the road cutting inland along the Jezreel Valley; the first settlement during the Early Bronze Age was abandoned after a few centuries but a large town was established during the Middle Bronze Age. Continuously inhabited since it is among the oldest continuously-inhabited settlements on Earth, it has, been subject to conquest and destruction several times and survived as little more than a large village for centuries at a time. In present-day Israel, the population was 48,303 in 2017, made up of Jews, Christians and Baha'is. In particular, Acre is the holiest city of the Bahá'í Faith and receives many pilgrims of that faith every year; the mayor is Shimon Lankri, reelected in 2011.
The etymology of the name is unknown, but not Semitic. A folk etymology in Hebrew is that, when the ocean was created, it expanded until it reached Acre and stopped, giving the city its name. Acre seems to be recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphics being the "Akka" in the execration texts from around 1800 BC and the "Aak" in the tribute lists of Thutmose III; the Akkadian cuneiform Amarna letters mention an "Akka" in the mid-14th-century BC. On its native currency, Acre's name was written ʿK, it appears once in Biblical Hebrew. Other transcriptions of these names include Acco, Accho and Ocina. Acre was known to the Greeks as Ákē, a homonym for Greek word meaning "cure". Greek legend offered a folk etymology that Hercules had found curative herbs at the site after one of his many fights; this name was latinized as Ace. Josephus's histories transcribed the city into Greek as Akre. Under the successors of Alexander the Great, the Egyptians called the city Ptolemais and the Syrians Antioch or Antiochenes.
As both names were shared by a great many other towns, they were variously distinguished. The Syrians called it "Antioch in Ptolemais", the Romans Ptolemais in Phoenicia. Others knew it as "Antiochia Ptolemais". Under Claudius, it was briefly known as Germanicia in Ptolemais; as a Roman colony, it was notionally refounded and renamed Colonia Claudii Caesaris Ptolemais or Colonia Claudia Felix Ptolemais Garmanica Stabilis after its imperial sponsor Claudius. During the Crusades, it was known again as Acre or as St. John of Acre, after the Knights Hospitaller who had their headquarters there; the remains of the oldest settlement at the site of modern Acre were found at a tell located 1.5 km east of the modern city of Acre. Known as Tel Akko in Hebrew and Tell el-Fukhar in Arabic, its remains date to about 3000 BC, during the Early Bronze Age; this farming community endured for only a couple of centuries, after which the site was abandoned after being inundated by rising seawaters. Acre was resettled as an urban centre during the Middle Bronze Age and has been continuously inhabited since then.
During the Iron Age, Acre culturally affiliated with Phoenicia. In the biblical Book of Judges, Akko appears in a list of the places which the Israelites were not able to conquer from the Canaanites, it is described in the territory of the tribe of Asher and, according to Josephus's account, was reputed to have been ruled by one of Solomon's provincial governors. Around 725 BC, Acre joined Sidon and Tyre in a revolt against the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser V. Strabo refers to the city as once a rendezvous for the Persians in their expeditions against Egypt. According to historians such as Diodurus Siculus and Strabo, King Cambyses II attacked Egypt after massing a huge army on the plains near the city of Acre. In December 2018 archaeologists digging at the site of Tell Keisan in Acre unearthed the remains of a Persian military outpost that might have played a role in the successful 525 B. C. Achaemenid invasion of Egypt; the Persian-period fortifications at Tell Keisan were heavily damaged during Alexander's fourth-century B.
C. campaign to drive the Achaemenids out of the Levant. After Alexander's death, his main generals divided his empire among themselves. At first, the Egyptian Ptolemies held the land around Acre. Ptolemy II renamed the city Ptolemais in his own and his father's honour in the 260s BC. Antiochus III conquered the town for the Syrian Seleucids in 200 BC. In the late 170s or early 160s BC, Antiochus IV founded a Greek colony in the town, which he named Antioch after himself. About 165 BC Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucids in several battles in Galilee, drove them into Ptolemais. About 153 BC Alexander Balas, son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, contesting the Seleucid crown with Demetrius, seized the city, which opened its gates to him. Demetrius offered many bribes to the Maccabees to obtain Jewish support against his rival, including the revenues of Ptolemais for the benefit of the Temple in Jerusalem, but in vain. Jonathan Apphus threw in his lot with Alexander and in 150 BC he was received by him with great honour in Ptolemais.
Some years however, Tryphon, an officer of the Seleucid Empire, who had grow
Aleppo
Aleppo is a city in Syria, serving as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 4.6 million in 2010, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city before the Syrian Civil War. Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied by Amorites since at least the latter part of the 3rd millennium BC; this is when Aleppo is first mentioned in cuneiform tablets unearthed in Ebla and Mesopotamia, in which it is a part of the Amorite state of Yamhad, is noted for its commercial and military proficiency. Such a long history is attributed to its strategic location as a trading center midway between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia. For centuries, Aleppo was the largest city in the Syrian region, the Ottoman Empire's third-largest after Constantinople and Cairo; the city's significance in history has been its location at one end of the Silk Road, which passed through central Asia and Mesopotamia.
When the Suez Canal was inaugurated in 1869, trade was diverted to sea and Aleppo began its slow decline. At the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Aleppo ceded its northern hinterland to modern Turkey, as well as the important railway connecting it to Mosul. In the 1940s, it lost its main access to the sea, Antakya and İskenderun to Turkey; the isolation of Syria in the past few decades further exacerbated the situation. This decline may have helped to preserve the old city of Aleppo, its medieval architecture and traditional heritage, it won the title of the "Islamic Capital of Culture 2006", has had a wave of successful restorations of its historic landmarks. The Battle of Aleppo occurred in the city during the Syrian Civil War, many parts of the city suffered massive destruction. Affected parts of the city are undergoing reconstruction. Modern-day English-speakers refer to the city as Aleppo, it was known in antiquity as Khalpe, to the Greeks and Romans as Beroea. During the Crusades, again during the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon of 1923–1946, the name Alep was used.
Aleppo represents the Italianised version of this. The original ancient name, has survived as the current Arabic name of the city, it is of obscure origin. However, the term Ḥalab might be derived from related to a folktale of Abraham, who milked his sheep to feed the poor. Others have proposed that Ḥalab means "iron" or "copper" in Amorite languages, since the area served as a major source of these metals in antiquity. Another possibility is that Ḥalab means'white', as this is the word for'white' in Aramaic, the local language which preceded regional Arabization; this may explain how Ḥalab became the Hebrew word for milk or vice versa, as well as offers a possible explanation for the modern-day Arabic nickname of the city, ash-Shahbaa, which means "the white-colored mixed with black" and derives from the famous white marble of Aleppo. Abraham is said to have camped on the acropolis which, long before his time, served as the foundation of a fortress where the Aleppo citadel is standing now, he milked his grey cow there, hence Aleppo's name "Halab Al-Shahba".
From the 11th century it was common rabbinic usage to apply the term "Aram-Zobah" to the area of Aleppo, many Syrian Jews continue to do so. Aleppo has scarcely been touched by archaeologists; the site has been occupied from around 5000 BC. Aleppo appears in historical records as an important city much earlier than Damascus; the first record of Aleppo comes from the third millennium BC, in the Ebla tablets when Aleppo was referred to as Ha-lam. Some historians, such as Wayne Horowitz, identify Aleppo with the capital of an independent kingdom related to Ebla, known as Armi, although this identification is contested; the main temple of the storm god Hadad was located on the citadel hill in the center of the city, when the city was known as the city of Hadad. Naram-Sin of Akkad mention his destruction of Ebla and Armani/Armanum, in the 23rd century BC. but the identification of Armani in the inscription of Naram-Sim as Armi in the Eblaite tablets is debated, as there was no Akkadian annexation of Ebla or northern Syria.
In the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian Empire period, Aleppo's name appears in its original form as Ḥalab for the first time. Aleppo was the capital of the important Amorite dynasty of Yamḥad; the kingdom of Yamḥad, alternatively known as the'land of Ḥalab,' was one of the most powerful in the Near East during the reign of Yarim-Lim I, who formed an alliance with Hammurabi of Babylonia against Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria. Yamḥad was devastated by the Hittites under Mursilis I in the 16th century BC. However, it soon resumed its leading role in the Levant when the Hittite power in the region waned due to internal strife. Taking advantage of the power vacuum in the region, king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni instigated a rebellion that ended the life of Yamhad last king Ilim-Ilimma I in c. 1525 BC, Parshatatar conquered Aleppo and the city found itself on the frontline in the struggle between the Mitanni, the Hittites and Egypt. Niqmepa of Alalakh who descends from the old Yamhadite kings controlled the city as a vassal to Mitanni and was attacked by Tudhaliya I of the Hittites as a retaliation for his alliance to
1931 census of Palestine
1931 census of Palestine was the second census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate for Palestine. It was carried out on 18 November 1931 under the direction of Major E. Mills, following the 1922 census of Palestine. No further census was conducted in Palestine by the British administration; the census found a total population of 1,035,821 – an increase of 36.8% since 1922, of which the Jewish population increased by 108.4%. The population was divided by religion as follows: 759,717 Muslims, 174,610 Jews, 91,398 Christians, 9,148 Druzes, 350 Bahais, 182 Samaritans, 421 "no religion". A special problem was posed by the nomadic Bedouin of the south. Estimates of each tribe were made by officers of the district administration according to local observation; the total of 759,717 Muslims included 66,553 persons enumerated by this method. The number of foreign British forces stationed in Palestine in 1931 totalled 2,500. Three volumes of data derived from the census were published by the Government of Palestine.
They were edited by Assistant Chief Secretary, E. Mills. Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages and Administrative Areas. Jerusalem, 1932. Census of Palestine 1931, Volume I. Palestine Part I, Report. Alexandria, 1933. Census of Palestine 1931, Volume II. Palestine, Part II, Tables. Alexandria, 1933. Miscellaneous short extracts from the census reports at Emory University:. J. McCarthy, The Population of Palestine, Columbia University Press; this contains many pages of tables extracted from the census reports
Israel Tennis Centers
Israel Tennis Centers is the largest social service agency for children in Israel, serving more than a half million children and their families since its first center opened in Ramat Hasharon in 1976. With 14 centers on the country in underprivileged communities, the not-for-profit Centers use tennis to promote the social and psychological well being of their students. Another of its goals is the development of coaches, building and maintaining courts and facilities at the highest levels; the ITC is the physical home of the Israel Children's Centers, Israel's largest social service agency for children. The Israel Children's Centers serve 10,000 children every week through a variety of programs that address development and social needs, including coexistence programs for Arab and Jewish children and customized programs for a variety of disabilities; the ITC has to date produced the following top-30 players: Andy Ram. In 1974, at a time when tennis in Israel was a sport played by tourists as beach hotels, Dr. Ian Froman, Freddie Krivine, Joseph D. Shane, Harold Landesberg, Rubin Josephs, Dr. William H. Lippy began fundraising efforts to launch tennis as a sport in Israel and to build a National Tennis Center on an old strawberry patch in Ramat HaSharon given to the ITC by the government.
On April 25, 1976, Leah Rabin cut the ribbon to the Center, 250 children signed up to participate. Canadian pioneers of the Centers included Joseph Frieberg, Gerry Goldberg, Ralph Halbert, Harold Green, their fundraising efforts laid the financial foundation for Canada Stadium, where the Davis Cup and Fed Cup were hosted in Israel until 2009, the construction and maintenance of the centers, as well as provision of equipment to the children, were funded without any government assistance. By 2008, about 350,000 Jewish and Moslem Israeli children had gone through the seven complexes funded by the ITC, 1951 Wimbledon champion Dick Savitt was overseeing the coaching techniques. Anna Smashnova moved to Israel with her family in 1990, aged 15, trained at the ITC. In 1991 the ATP donated $5,000 to the ITC, Argentine tennis player Martín Jaite, Jewish, donated $3,000. In 1995, Israeli former Davis Cup player and national champion Gilad Bloom, world champion in the under-12 age group, became senior coach role with the ITC.
Thirty years after the centers were begun, in 2006 the first ITC product won a Wimbledon title, as Andy Ram won the 2006 Wimbledon Mixed Doubles title. He had learned his tennis at the ITC's Jerusalem Tennis Center, Yoni Erlich, his men's doubles partner, had learned his tennis at the Haifa Tennis Center. "I can only find words of esteem for the Israel Tennis Center for their support and help", Ram said after his success. In 2007, Issy Kramer, Honorary President of the Israel Water Polo Association, indicated that he would like to replicate what the ITC has achieved, by building centers throughout Israel in poorer neighborhoods and development towns. "Swimming, like tennis, should not have to be an elitist sport", he said. Israel Tennis Center -TEL AVIV History The Israel Tennis Center in Tel Aviv opened on August 3, 1991 in the underprivileged neighborhood of Yad Eliyahu in order to provide low income families in south Tel Aviv with a safe place after school and access to sports activities for their children, regardless of their playing ability.
The first manager of the center was Ron Steele, followed by Ronen Bagan, Gil Elroee, Rami Zlikovitz, Danny Gelley, Shaya Azar, Erez Gabish. Since 2007, Yigal Gipesh has served as the manager of the center, he is an alumnus of the Sport University in Moscow. Yigal immigrated to Israel in 1990. Activities at the center The center has fourteen illuminated courts, a training wall, coach's room, sporting goods store; the center offers a variety of programs for all ages: a preschool program, a motor skill development program, a mini tennis program, a regular tennis program, a competitive program, both leisure and cardio tennis programs for adults. The center offers a kindergarten program designed for developmentally disabled children. Over the years, the center in Tel Aviv has produced many players that have gone on to win the Israel Tennis Champion youth division title as well as other national competitions; the best known among them is Shahar Peer. Shahar played at the center from age 6 to 14 under the tutelage of Yigal Gipesh.
Two other Israel Federation Cup team players, Anna Smashnova and Tzippi Ovzille grew up playing at the center. In 1995, the first international youth tournament was hosted at the center featuring a delegation from Moscow. A year the tournament attracted seven more Soviet Union countries as well as a number of European countries. In 1997, it received official recognition from Europe Tennis as an international tournament in memory of the late prime minister of Israel, Yitzchak Rabin, a longtime supporter of the Israel Tennis Centers. Many Israeli players began their professional tennis careers at the European International Tou
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