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Places of Interest in Israel
MEDITERRANEAN COAST

Main City-Tel-Aviv
Tel-Aviv's mayor writes that "life here never stops and has therefore earned itself the expression 'The City That Never Takes A Break'. Today an integral part of Tel-Aviv, Jaffa (Yafo, or "beautiful" in Hebrew; and Yafa in Arabic) has one of the oldest functioning harbors in the world.
The earliest archaeological finds in Jaffa date from the 18th century BCE. Inn 1468 BCE, the Egyptians conquered Jaffa by hiding soldiers in human-sized clay jars that were brought into the city market. During the 12th century, Jaffa was captured by the First Crusaders, Salah ad-Din, Richard the Lionheart, the Muslims, and then Louis IX. Louis built magnificent walls and towers, parts of which remain today. In 1267 the Mamluks overpowered the city, and Jaffa remained an important Arab stronghold until 1948.
Jewish immigrants began to settle in Jaffa as early as 1820. As the Jewish population in Jaffa increased, settlers decided to found a new suburb in the area. On April 11, 1909, they parceled out the land they had acquired north of Jaffa, naming it Anuzat Bayit (Housing Estate). One year later the suburb was renamed Tel-Aviv (Spring Hill).
Jaffa was officially incorporated into the Tel-Aviv municipality in 1949 and remains a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood today.

Caesarea
Herod the Great, built Caesarea on the site of a small Phoenician anchorage, at the end of the 1st century BC.
A network of crisscrossing streets, a temple, a theater, an amphitheater, markets and residential quarters all form part of Caesarea. It was built in a short twelve years and it rapidly grew to become a great commercial center and became the headquarters of the Roman government in Palestine.
The Palestine Exploration Fund began excavations in 1873 and they have already unearthed the Roman theater and amphitheater, Byzantine mosaics, aqueducts, a Crusader city, and an extremely sophisticated 2000-year-old harbor. Caesarea's multi-layered ruins constitute one of Israel's finest archaeological sites.

Akko (Acre)
The Old city of Akko (Akka in Arabic, historically written "Acre" in English) is surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean.
Each army that passed through Akko left behind their individual architectural signatures. Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Umayyads, and finally Crusaders, who came to the city in 1104, conquered Akko. The Mamluks ended Crusader rule in 1291, and almost 500 years later the Druze prince Fakhr ad-Din rebuilt the city.
Napoleon later claimed tat had Akko Fallen to him, "the world would have been mine". Unfortunately for him, his 1799 siege failed. When the British captured the port in 1918, it was a predominantly Arab town of 8000.

Gaza Strip

Although the Gaza Strip is at present under Palestinian rule, for geographical purposes we will consider it part of the Mediterranean Coastal region.

The Gaza Strip is a narrow territory which extends up from the northern Sinai Peninsula into Israel's Mediterranean coastal plain. It is bordered on the south by Egypt and on the west by the Mediterranean Sea and to the east and north by Israel. Its area is about 360 square km (139 square mile). The Gaza Strip is flat and sandy, with dunes pushing in from the coast, particularly in the south. The rainfall diminishes from the north to the south within an annual range of from 150 mm (6 inches). Only 13% of the land is arable and therefore the Strip has little fertile soil.

Currently the Gaza Strip is ruled under the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), except for small pockets of Jewish settlers which remain under Israeli rule.

The principal city is Gaza.