Tzrifin

The modern Hebrew name Tzrifin may preserve an ancient toponym connected to the area.[1] A Globes account suggests that Sarafand — also historically written as Tzarfand al-'Amar — probably preserves the ancient Hebrew name Tzrifin and links it to local metalworking or goldsmithing traditions. The same source says the area was called "Gei HaHarashim" ("Valley of the Craftsmen") in the first century CE, although it presents the name's origin as probable rather than established.[1]

The base sits in Israel's coastal plain, about 3 km northeast of Ramle, near the Ramla–Lod railway junction, with rail spurs historically leading directly to the installation.[2][4] In contemporary terms, it lies near the Nir Tzvi junction and the municipal areas of Rishon LeZion and Be'er Ya'akov.[6][3] The camp's official IDF designation is Camp Yadin, named after Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin, although it is commonly known as Camp Tzrifin.[1]

British Mandate Period

The British established Sarafand in 1917, siting it strategically near the important Ramla–Lod railway junction.[4] Military historian Alon Kadish described it as a medium-sized base until the 1936 Arab Revolt, when the arrival of reinforcements triggered extensive construction. It expanded further during World War II, ultimately becoming, in Kadish's words, "one of the most important and largest bases of the British army in the Middle East."[4] During the Mandate it functioned as the British army's central training base, with classrooms, barracks, and family housing spread across a complex compared in size to modern-day Givatayim.[5]

Sarafand hosted a variety of training functions. Units of the Jewish settlement's Guards, volunteers for the British Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), and drivers trained there, while Jewish volunteers enlisting in several British military formations underwent basic training at the camp.[4] The British also established a detention camp at Sarafand in July 1936, initially with 200 beds and later expanded to 400. By 1939 it had been repurposed as a detention facility for Jews, primarily those who had entered the country without authorization.[4]

In April 1939, a U.S. consular report recorded that 218 Jewish refugees — found near Ashkelon after 36 days at sea and suffering from hunger and exhaustion — were interned at the Sarafand military camp.[7]

The First Judeans

Sarafand was the organizing site for the First Judeans, a Jewish volunteer regiment commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Eliezer Margolin and formed there in 1919.[8] British authorities refused to permit the regiment to take part in the incidents at Tel Hai and Jerusalem in 1920 or the Arab disturbances of May 1921. When Margolin independently deployed part of the regiment during violence near Jaffa and Tel Aviv, the British disbanded it.[8]

The ATS and Jewish Women's Service

Sarafand became the training depot for the Palestinian ATS, the women's auxiliary corps.[2] Following requests in mid-1941 from WIZO, the Council of Working Women, and Hadassah, later joined by the Jewish Agency, permission was granted in October 1941 to recruit up to 5,000 women, including 2,000 immediately.[9] In January 1942, the first class of 60 women selected for officer and non-commissioned-officer training was recruited and trained at Sarafand.[9] The first cadre trainees arrived on January 18, and a British officer reported on January 29 that they were "smartening up very considerably."[2] The cadre completed training on March 12, after which the first ordinary recruits' course began.[2]

The first Palestinian recruits posted from Sarafand arrived at the 502 Motor Ambulance Convoy Company in Alexandria on March 15, 1942 — around 20 women, most working as clerks and the remainder as drivers.[2] From May 1 to October 31, 1942, the company transported 22,339 casualties without a single accident.[2] In one episode, a Palestinian woman driver who transported German prisoners from a hospital to a prisoner-of-war camp in October 1942 was asked by a prisoner, "How much do I pay for the taxi?" She answered, "Nothing," adding, "now, you will all pay for it after the War."[2] By the end of 1942, 12 new ATS companies had been formed across Egypt and Palestine.[2]

During the war, 3,500 Hebrew women were recruited to the ATS and another 700 served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, working in medicine, munitions, transport, nursing, and administration.[9] Jewish ATS drivers transported troops and weapons during the Second Battle of El Alamein, helping to block the Nazi advance toward Mandatory Palestine, and ATS alumni later joined the IDF, including in command roles.[9] Leah Seidemann worked as a nurse, later organized nursing services at the British Army hospital on Mount Scopus, reached the rank of sergeant, and modeled for an ATS recruitment poster.[10]

1948 and the Transfer to the IDF

At the end of the British Mandate, Sarafand was transferred to the Arab Legion.[1] Arab Legion soldiers and local Arab fighters entered through the camp's eastern "Jerusalem Gate" and fired on nearby Rishon LeZion.[4] The Givati Brigade's 52nd Battalion captured the camp during the War of Independence, after which it became an IDF base.[1][4]

The IDF described Tzrifin as a "ready-made asset inherited by the IDF," reflecting the direct reuse of British military infrastructure.[5] After 1948, the base continued as a major training hub, hosting basic training, infantry courses, non-commissioned-officer schools, and women's officer programs.[5] It historically housed the offices of the Artillery Corps and Signal Corps commanding officers and expanded into a large complex encompassing training bases for logistics, medicine, personnel administration, Home Front Command search and rescue, and the Ordnance Corps, as well as units connected with communications, intelligence, military police, and transport.[5][4]

A personal memoir recounts Sarafand — identified as Tzrifin — serving as the headquarters of an artillery battalion in the early IDF period. Soldiers trained on newly arrived Italian-made Scotti Isotta Frischini cannons using a single Italian manual and mixed ammunition, with instruction conducted in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Romanian.[11] The memoir also records that a radar-technicians course connected with the 505 Air Force Squadron opened at the base in March 1949 and ran through December 1949, using English-language technical materials including the textbook "The Principles of Radar."[11]

Military Prison No. 4 was located at Tzrifin; one first-person account describes serving 17 days of a 21-day sentence there in 1988 during the First Intifada.[12] In May 2025, the camp continued to host cyber and communications units and a central military clinic.[5]

The British designed Sarafand as a largely self-sufficient installation.[4] During World War II, when Italian forces blocked the Red Sea supply route, British forces in the region relied on the local economy for beds, clothing, canned food, cigarettes, and beer produced in Palestine under the Gold Star name. The camp also became an important employer of both Jewish and Arab workers during the Mandate period.[4]

Social life centered partly on the main street known as "the Mall," which was lined with bookstores, haberdasheries, and a small cinema where soldiers could socialize.[5] The camp's commercial center and swimming pool also served recreational functions; the pool was used by soldiers and by pupils from schools in nearby Rishon LeZion.[4]

Historically significant features of the camp included long Mandate-era barracks, the commercial center, swimming pool, cinema, and a 100-bed British military hospital. The hospital later formed the basis of Assaf Harofeh Hospital; it closed in 1948, after which the IDF used the site for medical training.[4]

The building that housed the old cinema was still standing in 2025.[5] The 2019 evacuation encompassed Tzrifin's central area, its commercial center, cinema, and a memorial to those killed in the Battle of Sarafand. Designated historic buildings were marked for preservation in their original form as part of the planned civilian neighborhood.[13]

In March 2015, the Israel Land Authority, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Finance signed the Shoham 3 agreement, which included Tzrifin among six main IDF bases slated for evacuation and redevelopment.[14] The Defense Ministry formally began evacuating and demolishing buildings at Tzrifin that same month — 98 years after the British built the camp.[15] The first phase covered 427 dunams and approximately 60,000 square meters of built space, with training bases planned for relocation to the Negev.[15]

By November 2016, an IDF training complex of 413 dunams had been fully evacuated and transferred to the Israel Land Authority — the first of six sites then expected to be cleared.[16] This complex had hosted the IDF's main training bases since 1948, including a logistics school, a Medical Corps training base, and an auxiliary training base.[16] Facilities demolished in subsequent phases included Training Base 10, used by the Medical Corps; Training Base 6, used by the Logistics Corps; Ground Forces unit buildings; and Training Base 20, the Ordnance Corps technological training complex.[13]

By July 2019, more than 1,200 dunams, or 120 hectares, and hundreds of thousands of square meters of buildings and infrastructure had been evacuated. The Defense Ministry described Tzrifin as the largest base it had evacuated since Israel's establishment.[13] The evacuation proceeded while other units continued operating within the remaining parts of the camp.[13]

By the completion of the State Comptroller's audit, Tzrifin had been only partially evacuated.[14] Across all Shoham 3 bases, about 65% of the required area had been cleared, while the program's overall completion deadline had shifted from January 2023 to November 2028. Most of the remaining area was associated with delays in two infrastructure projects, the Unified Supply Center and Ofek Rahav.[14] The Comptroller identified the four remaining parts of Tzrifin as "islands" with potential for future evacuation, without specifying individual relocation dates or Tzrifin-specific development figures.[14]

In February 2026, the Defense Ministry, Finance Ministry, and Israel Land Authority signed the Shoham 4 agreement, which included the remaining Tzrifin complex among 11 bases in central Israel and the Haifa area slated for relocation over approximately a decade.[17] The four camps remaining at Tzrifin under Shoham 4 house the C4I Directorate, a regional medical center, the Magal training command headquarters and school, and an Air Force unit.[17]

Redevelopment plans envision a large mixed-use civilian district straddling the Rishon LeZion and Be'er Ya'akov municipal boundaries.[18] Plans reported in 2017 called for approximately 18,000 homes across Tzrifin — about 10,000 in Be'er Ya'akov and the remainder in Rishon LeZion — organized across eight planning compounds.[3] Under Shoham 4, the Tzrifin-Magal area was assigned about 711 homes and 90,000 square meters of commercial and employment space; the Tzrifin Blue Pearl area, about 1,501 homes and 176,000 square meters; the Tzrifin maintenance-center area, about 110 homes and 80,000 square meters; and the Tzrifin Marpeh area, about 242 homes.[17] Plans also include a park of approximately 700 dunams on former camp grounds, incorporating lawns, water features, picnic areas, sports facilities, and paths connecting to nearby residential neighborhoods.[19]

The area around Tzrifin has been the site of several terrorist attacks. In 2003, a suicide bombing at the Tzrifin bus stop, attributed to a Hamas cell, killed nine people and wounded 14.[20]

On April 4, 2023, a Palestinian terrorist armed with a knife attacked an IDF soldier at the Tzrifin Junction in central Israel and attempted to seize the soldier's weapon. The soldier was critically wounded, and a second soldier was also wounded.[21] Passersby and police detained the 21-year-old attacker, identified as Mahmoud Awawda from Dura, south of Hebron, before he could escape.[21]

On July 14, 2024, a car-ramming attack at the Nir Tzvi junction, near the Tzrifin base, seriously wounded an IDF officer and another soldier and moderately and lightly wounded two additional soldiers. The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement claimed responsibility.[6]