Participating in the tournament are representatives from the top four chess countries in the world: United States, Russia, Ukraine and Armenia. Israel is currently in fifth place worldwide. Also participating are players from Cuba, Georgia and China, which is the Asian champion. The Egyptian team, which is the African champion, is boycotting the tournament because it is being held in Israel.
Israeli President Moshe Katzav, addressing the participants in Be'er Sheva, lamented the fact that Egypt chose to use the game as a weapon instead of a unifying force. "Unfortunately, there are still countries in the world that don't recognize the universal nature of sport, turning it into a weapon for their struggle," Katzav said.
Though a peace treaty was signed with Egypt in exchange for the Sinai, such gestures and boycotts of the Jewish State have been a hallmark of Egypt's attitude toward Israel in recent years.
Be’er Sheva, located in southern Israel’s Negev desert, is home to more chess grandmasters per capita than any other city on the globe.
The city’s chess legacy began in 1972, when Russian Jew Eliyahu Levant, the former coach of Leningrad’s Spartak Chess Club, managed to leave the Soviet Union and come to Israel. Inspired by Zionist literature he had read that had been smuggled into Russia, he decided to move to Be’er Sheva to participate in David Ben-Gurion’s dream of making the Negev desert blossom.
Levant was urged by Israel’s existing chess establishment to settle in Tel Aviv, but he founded his chess club in Be’er Sheva instead, playing against thousands of children from schools nearby and choosing 100 of the best to train.
In the 90s, when one million Russian Jews arrived in Israel following the fall of the Soviet Union, many headed straight for Levant’s chess club in the Negev.
"There is no town like Beer Sheva for grandmasters," Levant says. "Not Moscow and not St Petersburg – Be’er Sheva."