rehovot

Rehovot

city, central Israel, on the coastal plain south-southwest of Tel Aviv-Yafo, in the centre of the country's most productive citrus belt. The name (Hebrew: "broad places," or "room") is from the biblical allusion in Genesis 26:22. Founded in 1890 by Warsaw Jews, Rehovot soon became economically self-sufficient, owing to its prosperous citrus groves, and absorbed many immigrant agricultural labourers. Under Ottoman rule before World War I, it was the first town to dismiss its Arab guards and to employ ha-Shomer, the Jewish settlement police.

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