Israel Subdistricts

Israel is a long, thin country on the eastern Mediterranean, a few hours' drive from the Lebanese border in the north to the Red Sea at Eilat in the south. The state divides itself into six districts (mehozot), and each district into subdistricts (nafot). Six is too few for a quiz, so this game asks for the subdistricts and groups them by the district they belong to.

The quiz: Name to place, on the map
Grouped by: The six districts the subdistricts belong to
In the game: 15 subdistricts

Start

What you are looking at

The subdistricts of Israel as the state administers them inside the Green Line, with the Golan Heights included. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not drawn here. Subdistricts are named for their main town or region, in the usual English spelling, so some are cities (Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem) and some are landscapes (the Golan, the Sharon, the Jezreel valley).

The sizes are wildly uneven, which is what makes the map harder than the count suggests. The Negev desert makes up most of the country's area and belongs to a single subdistrict, while the coastal plain between Haifa and Ashkelon is carved into a row of slices barely a few dozen kilometres across.

How to place one

Start with the desert. The one huge southern subdistrict is Beersheba, a wedge that narrows to a point at the Red Sea.
Walk up the coast. Ashkelon, Rehovot, Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva and the Sharon follow one another from the Gaza border towards Haifa, and Hadera, Haifa and Acre carry on to the Lebanese border.
Fill in the middle. Ramla and Jerusalem sit inland of the coastal plain, with Jerusalem against the West Bank.
Finish in the north. The Jezreel valley, Kinneret, Safed and the Golan fill the Galilee, with the Golan on the high ground east of the Sea of Galilee.

Every subdistrict, by district

Northern District5 subdistricts: Acre, Golan, Jezreel, Kinneret, Safed
Central District4 subdistricts: Petah Tikva, Ramla, Rehovot, Sharon
Haifa District2 subdistricts: Hadera, Haifa
Southern District2 subdistricts: Ashkelon, Beersheba
Tel Aviv District1 subdistrict: Tel Aviv
Jerusalem District1 subdistrict: Jerusalem

Worked examples

Tel Aviv

The smallest

Tel Aviv is a short stretch of coast about the size of the city itself, with Petah Tikva behind it and Rehovot to its south. It is the one subdistrict that is also a district, so it has no neighbour of its own group.

Beersheba

The largest

Beersheba is the whole Negev, more than half of the country's area, with Egypt to its west and Jordan along the Arava valley to its east.

Golan

The far northeast

The Golan is the plateau in the northeastern corner, above the Sea of Galilee and against the Syrian border. Israel has administered it since 1967, and the game draws it with the rest of the country, as the state does.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the game ask for subdistricts rather than districts?

Israel has only six districts, which is too few to make a quiz. The subdistricts are the next tier down, and the game groups them by district so you can learn the map a district at a time.

Why are the West Bank and Gaza not on the map?

The game draws the territory the Israeli districts cover inside the 1949 armistice lines, plus the Golan Heights. Its Palestinian neighbour is a separate map.