Rabin Square
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Rabin Square (Hebrew: כיכר רבין, Kikar Rabin) is a large public city square in central Tel Aviv. It is named after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated there in 1995. Surrounded by the city hall building to the north (designed by the architect Menachem Cohen), Ibn Gabirol Street to the east, Frischmann Street to the south and Hen Boulevard to the west, it was designed alongside to City Hall in 1964 by the architects Yaski and Alexandroni. Before it was renamed in Rabin's memory, the square was known as Kings of Israel Square (כיכר מלכי ישראל, Kikar Malkhey Yisrael).
It is the largest open public square in Tel Aviv, and is known for holding many political rallies, parades, and other public events. Until the early 1990s, it also served as a public exhibition ground for IDF field units (mostly tanks and heavy artillery) on Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli independence day.
On September 25, 1982 hundreds of thousands of Israelis (about 10 percent of the country's population at the time) demonstrated in the square, incensed over the killing of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.[citation needed] At the conclusion of a rally on November 4, 1995, the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated. In the days following the event, thousands of Israelis gathered on the site to commemorate Rabin. The young people who came to mourn Rabin were dubbed the "Candles Youth" (נוער הנרות, noar hanerot) after the many yahrzeit candles they lit. Some of the graffiti they drew upon the nearby walls has been preserved.
Today a memorial can be found on the site where Rabin was assassinated (at the northeast corner of the square, below City Hall). Part of the memorial is a small, open legacy wall for the man. Near the north end of the square is a memorial sculpture designed by the Israeli artist Yigal Tumarkin commemorating the Holocaust.
In recent years much criticism has been heard about the Square's appearance, and especially about the City Hall building. What in the 1960s was one of the city's biggest and most impressive architectural designs is today sometimes considered one of the city's worst eyesores. Plans have been made (most of which have even been approved) to renovate the whole square and City Hall. The plans include giving City Hall a more modern look to fit in with the many new skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, and building a large underground parking complex underneath the square for the neighborhood, which suffers from a dire lack of parking space. Opposition to the renovation plans mostly centers around arguments that the design of the square and City Hall is part of Tel Aviv's history and should be preserved. This opposition has delayed construction.
