History of Tel Aviv–Yafo

An old Canaanite city, Jaffa was taken by Thuti, general of Thutmose III of Egypt, in the 15th century bce and became a provincial capital during the Egyptian New Kingdom. The Israelite kings David and Solomon occupied it, the latter using it as the port for landing Lebanon timber that floated down the coast from Tyre. Later Jaffa was ruled by the Persians, but by about 350 bce it is recorded as independent. After Alexander the Great’s conquest, the Ptolemies held it. In 68 ce the Roman emperor Vespasian captured it on his way to Jerusalem; by that time the superior artificial harbour and port city of Caesarea to the north was already bringing decline to Jaffa, which, by comparison, was an inadequate port. The Crusaders captured the city in 1126 but lost it to Saladin in 1187. In 1191 it was recaptured by Richard I of England, but by 1197 it had been retaken by Saladin’s brother, al-Malik al-ʿĀdil (honorific: Sayf al-Dīn, “Sword of the Faith”). Jaffa was razed by the Mamluks of Egypt in 1345 because of a threatened new Crusade, but toward the end of the 17th century it began to develop again as a seaport.

During the course of the 19th century, Jaffa grew from a tiny town into the region’s most important port and, after Jerusalem, the second most important city. Surrounded by productive agricultural hinterland, Jaffa was enhanced by its location on the junction of the coastal road and the road to Jerusalem, allowing it to serve as both an important hub for the export of citrus fruit and the gateway for pilgrims to Jerusalem and to the larger Holy Land. With the start of Jewish-Zionist immigration, Jaffa became the cultural and educational centre of the immigrant population and included two Jewish neighbourhoods, Newe Ẓedeq and Newe Shalom, which were established in northern Jaffa in the late 19th century.

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 as a Jewish suburb of the mainly Arab Jaffa. It was named for Theodor Herzl’s novel Altneuland (1902), translated into Hebrew as Tel Aviv (“Spring Hill”), in which Herzl, the founder of the political form of Zionism, put forth his ideas for a new Jewish state. The name also has a biblical association, having been mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel as a settlement of exiled Jews in Babylonia (see Babylonian Exile). Tel Aviv’s founders were mainly middle-class immigrants who set out to build a European-style suburb with straight, wide streets, parks, and modern urban infrastructure and services. The new suburb was to be run by an elected autonomous local council, although nominally it was part of Jaffa. In 1917 the entire population of Tel Aviv and the Jewish population of nearby Jaffa were expelled northward by the Ottoman military authorities, who suspected their sympathies were with the advancing British army. The city’s residents returned home in late 1917, after Jaffa and Tel Aviv were taken by the British.

Growth during the period of the British mandate in Palestine was largely influenced by waves of Jewish immigration into Palestine and by rounds of violence between Arabs and Jews. Substantial levels of Jewish immigration led to rapid population growth and construction booms; middle-class immigrants from Poland and Germany arriving with capital were particularly prominent in these waves. Violent exchanges between Arabs and Jews in 1921, 1929, and 1936–39 led to an increasing separation between the two populations. The anti-Jewish riots of 1921, in which Arabs attacked the Jewish population of Jaffa, led thousands of Jews to leave the city for Tel Aviv, prompting most Jewish businesses to move there as well. Separation between Arabs and Jews was virtually completed in 1936–39 when a general strike in the port of Jaffa led to the establishment of a separate port in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was granted township status in 1921 and full municipal (city) status in 1934, with Meir Dizengoff serving as the city’s first mayor.

Tel Aviv’s status as the first urban territory in Palestine managed by Jews contributed to its appeal to Jewish immigrants in the 1920s and ’30s. It was in this period that Tel Aviv emerged as the economic, cultural, political, and military centre of the Jewish population in Palestine. Theatres were established, many important writers took up residence in the city, and the first trade fair took place in the early 1930s. The historical nucleus of Tel Aviv developed into a thriving business centre. By 1933 the population of Tel Aviv surpassed that of Jaffa, then an Arab economic core and one of the largest Arab communities in Palestine, to become Palestine’s largest and most important city.

According to the United Nations’ 1947 resolution on the partition of Palestine (see United Nations Resolution 181), Jaffa was meant to remain an Arab enclave within the Jewish state. However, in May of 1948, days prior to Israel’s declaration of independence and the beginning of the Arab-Israeli wars, the Jewish military forces of the Haganah and Irgun Zvai Leumi took control of Jaffa, and the Arab-majority population of about 65,000 fled. Jewish immigrants soon settled in the largely deserted city. Jaffa was amalgamated with Tel Aviv in 1950, and the united municipality became officially known as Tel Aviv–Yafo. Tel Aviv’s municipal boundaries were further expanded to encompass several Arab villages and a number of Jewish neighbourhoods; additional land north of the Yarqon River was annexed in the 1950s. The city’s growth dwindled when no more land could be annexed and public construction projects for the absorption of immigrants were moved to locations outside the city, where land prices were cheaper. Port operations in Yafo and Tel Aviv harbours ceased upon the inauguration of the modern port in nearby Ashdod in 1965. Shlomo Lahat, the prominent Tel Aviv mayor who governed the city between 1974 and 1993, initiated large-scale development projects at great expense in order to boost the image of Tel Aviv and the quality of life in the city.

In the turbulent 1990s, Tel Aviv experienced renewed growth and economic restructuring, as well as security problems associated with the Israeli-Arab conflict and peace process. During these years, absorption of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, an influx of foreign workers, and the gentrification of older parts of central Tel Aviv led to a modest growth in population. Greater Tel Aviv benefitted substantially from the renewed and rapid growth of the Israeli economy. The city acted as the hub for foreign investors entering the Israeli economy in that decade and served as the crux of the real estate boom and of the proliferation of high-technology start-ups. However, Tel Aviv suffered a number of violent attacks; among them were Iraqi missile assaults during the Persian Gulf War (in 1991; causing more panic than damage), rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip (in 2012, 2014, and 2021), and several terrorist attacks (including those in 1996, 2001, 2003, and 2006) that accompanied the collapse of the peace process associated with the Oslo Accords. The renewed conflict contributed in part to a significant economic downturn in the early 21st century that was further exacerbated by a global crisis in high-technology industries. However, Tel Aviv’s economy soon recovered, and the city witnessed a real estate boom. Tel Aviv and its metropolitan area have continued to draw talent and economic and cultural focus from other parts of Israel, leading to raised concerns of an unprecedented level of polarization.