My City Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv is the second-largest city in Israel, with an estimated population of 393,900. The city is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, with a land area of 51.4 square kilometres (19.8 sq mi). It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, home to 3.2 million people as of 2008. The city is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality, headed by Ron Huldai. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa. The growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced Jaffa, which was largely Arab at the time. Tel Aviv and Jaffa were merged into a single municipality in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel. Tel Aviv’s White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, comprises the world’s largest concentration of Modernist-style buildings. Tel Aviv is classified as a beta+ world city, being a major economic hub and the richest city in Israel, and home to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and many corporate offices and research and development centers. Its beaches, bars, cafés, restaurants, upscale shopping, great weather, cosmopolitan lifestyle and famous 24-hour culture have led to it being a popular tourist destination for domestic and overseas visitors alike, and has made its reputation as “a city that never sleeps”. It is the country’s financial capital and a major performing arts and business center. Tel Aviv’s urban area is the Middle East’s second biggest city economy, while the city is ranked 42nd among global cities by Foreign Policy’s 2008 Global Cities Index. It is also the most expensive city in the region, and 17th most expensive city in the world. New York City-based writer and editor David Kaufman called it the “Mediterranean’s New Capital of Cool”. In 2010, Tel Aviv has been named the third-best city in the Middle East & Africa by Travel + Leisure magazine. The name Tel Aviv (literally “Spring Mount”) was chosen in 1910 out of many suggestions, including “Herzliya”. Tel Aviv is the Hebrew title of Theodor Herzl’s book Altneuland (“Old New Land”), translated from German by Nahum Sokolow. Sokolow took the name from Ezekiel 3:15: “Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel Aviv, that lived by the river Chebar, and to where they lived; and I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days.”This name was found fitting as it embraced the idea of the renaissance of the ancient Jewish homeland. Aviv is Hebrew for “spring”, symbolizing renewal, and tel is an archaeological site that reveals layers of civilization built one over the other. Theories vary about the etymology of Jaffa or Yafo in Hebrew. Some believe that the name derives from yafah or yofi, Hebrew for “beautiful” or “beauty”. Another tradition is that Japheth, son of Noah, founded the city and that it was named for him. The name is also transliterated as Tel-Abib in the King James Bible. The ancient port of Jaffa has changed hands many times in the course of history. Archeological excavations from 1955 to 1974 unearthed towers and gates from the Middle Bronze Age. Subsequent excavations, from 1997 onwards, helped date earlier discoveries. They also exposed sections of a packed-sandstone glacis and a “massive brick wall”, dating from the Late Bronze Age as well as a temple “attributed to the Sea Peoples” and dwellings from the Iron Age.Remnants of buildings from the Persian, Hellenistic and Pharaonic periods were also discovered. The city is first mentioned in letters from 1470 BCE that record its conquest by Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III.Jaffa is mentioned several times in the Bible, as the port from which Jonah set sail for Tarshish; as bordering on the territory of the Tribe of Dan; and as the port at which the wood for Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem arrived from Lebanon. According to some sources it has been a port for at least 4,000 years. In 1099, the Christian armies of the First Crusade, led by Godfrey of Bouillon occupied Jaffa, which had been abandoned by the Muslims, fortified the town and improved its harbor. As the County of Jaffa, the town soon became important as the main sea supply route for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Jaffa was captured by Saladin in 1192 but swiftly re-taken by Richard Coeur de Lion, who added to its defenses. In 1223, Emperor Frederick II added further fortications. Crusader domination ended in 1268, when the Mamluk Sultan Baibars captured the town, destroyed its harbor and razed its fortifications. To prevent further Crusader incursions, the city was ransacked in 1336, 1344 and 1346 by Nasir al-Din Muhammad. In the 16th century, Jaffa was conquered by the Ottomans and was administered as a village in the Sanjak of Gaza.Napoleon besieged the city in 1799 and killed scores of inhabitants; a plague epidemic followed, decimating the remaining population. Jaffa began to grow as an urban center in the early 18th century, when the Ottoman government in Constantinople intervened to guard the port and reduce attacks by Bedouins and pirates. However, the real expansion came during the 19th century, when the population grew from 2,500 in 1806 to 17,000 in 1886. Tel Aviv was founded on land purchased from Bedouins north of Jaffa. This photograph is of the 1909 auction of the first lots From 1800 to 1870, Jaffa was surrounded by walls and towers, which were torn down to allow for expansion as security improved. The sea wall, 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) high, remained intact until the 1930s, when it was built over during a renovation of the port by the British Mandatory authorities. During the mid-19th century, the city grew prosperous from trade, especially of silk and Jaffa oranges, with Europe. In the 1860s Jaffa’s small Sephardic community was joined by Jews from Morocco and small numbers of European Ashkenazi Jews, making by 1882 a total Jewish population of more than 1,500. The first Jews to build houses outside of Jaffa, in the area of modern day Tel Aviv were Yemenite Jews, who in 1881 built houses that later became the neighbourhood of Kerem HaTeimanim (Hebrew for “the Vineyard of the Yemenites”). In 1896 the Yemenite Jews established the neighbourhood of Mahane Yehuda, and in 1904 the neighbourhood of Mahane Yossef. Those two neighbourhoods were later merged into one neighbourhood – Shabazi neighbourhood. During the 1880s, Ashkenazi immigration to Jaffa increased with the onset of the First Aliyah. The new arrivals were motivated more by Zionism than religion and came to farm the land and engage in productive labor. In keeping with their pioneer ideology, some chose to settle in the sand dunes north of Jaffa. The beginning of modern-day Tel Aviv is marked by the construction of Neve Tzedek, a neighborhood built by Ashkenazi settlers between 1887 and 1896. The Second Aliyah led to further expansion In 1906, a group of Jews, among them residents of Jaffa, followed the initiative of Akiva Arye Weiss and banded together to form the Ahuzat Bayit (lit. “homestead”) society. The society’s goal was to form a “Hebrew urban centre in a healthy environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics and modern hygiene”. The urban planning for the new city was influenced by the ideas of the Garden city movement. In 1908, the group wedding photographer Berkshire purchased 5 hectares (12 acres) of dunes northeast of Jaffa.[citation needed] Following this purchase, Meir Dizengoff, who later became Tel Aviv’s first mayor, decided to join Ahuzat Bayit. His vision for Tel Aviv involved peaceful co-existence with the Arabs. In April 1909, sixty-six Jewish families gathered on a desolate sand dune on what is now Rothschild Boulevard to parcel stained concrete fort worth out the land by lottery using seashells. This gathering is considered the official date of the establishment of Tel Aviv, although some of Tel Aviv’s neighbourhoods had already existed back then, including Tel Aviv’s first neighbourhood, Kerem HaTeimanim, that was built by Yemenite Jews. The lottery was organised by Akiva Arye Weiss, the president of the association. Weiss had an original idea, the names of the families were inscribed on white shells and the plot number on shells of a different color. Within a year, Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Yehuda Halevi, Lilienblum, and Rothschild streets were Wayne County built; a water system was installed; and 66 houses (including some on six subdivided plots) were completed. At the end of Herzl Street, a plot was allocated for a new building for the Herzliya Hebrew High School, founded in Jaffa in 1906.On May 21, 1910, the name Tel Aviv was adopted. Tel Aviv was planned as an independent Hebrew city with wide streets and boulevards, running water at each house and street lights. By 1914, Tel Aviv had nature sounds grown to include more than 100 hectares (247 acres), including several new neighborhoods. However, growth halted in 1917 when the Ottoman authorities expelled the Jews of table tennis Jaffa. A report published in The New York Times by United States Consul Garrels in Alexandria, Egypt described the Jaffa deportation of early April 1917. The orders of evacuation were aimed chiefly at the Jewish population. Under British administration, the political friction between Jews and Arabs in Palestine increased. On 18th birthday ideas May 1, 1921, the Jaffa Riots erupted and an Arab mob killed dozens of Jewish residents. In the wake of this violence, many Jews left Jaffa for Tel Aviv, increasing the population of Tel Aviv from 2,000 in 1920 to around 34,000 by 1925.New businesses opened in Tel Aviv, leading to the decline of Jaffa as a commercial center. In 1925, Patrick Geddes drew up a master plan for Tel Aviv that was adopted by the city council led by Meir Dizengoff. The core idea was the development of a Garden City. The boundaries he worked stamped concrete fort worth within, the Yarkon River in the North and Ibn Gvirol Street in the East, are still regarded as Tel Aviv’s real city limits although it has since grown beyond them. Tel Aviv continued to grow in 1926but suffered an economic setback between 1927 and 1930. The Ben Gurion House was built in 1930-1, part of a new worker’s housing development. At the same time, cultural life was given a boost by the establishment of the Ohel Theater and the decision of Habima Theatre to make Tel Aviv its permanent base in 1931. Tel Aviv gained municipal status in 1934. The population rose dramatically during the Fifth Aliyah when the Nazis came to power in Germany. As the Jews fled Europe, many settled in Tel Aviv, bringing the population in 1937 to 150,000, compared to Jaffa’s 69,000 residents. Within two years, it had reached 160,000, which was over a third of the country’s total Jewish population. Many new immigrants remained after disembarking in Jaffa, turning the city into a center of urban life. In the wake of the 1936–39 Arab revolt, a local port independent of Jaffa was built in 1938, and Lod Airport (later Ben Gurion Airport) and Sde Dov Airport opened between 1937 and 1938. Tel Aviv’s White City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004, emerged in the 1930s. Many of the German Jewish architects trained at the Bauhaus, the Modernist school of architecture closed by the Nazis in 1933, fled Germany. Some, like architect Arieh Sharon, came to Palestine and adapted the architectural outlook of the Bauhaus as well as other similar schools, to local conditions, creating what is claimed to be the largest concentration of buildings in the International Style in the world. Starting in July 1940, Tel Aviv was a major target of the Italian Bombing of Palestine in World War II. On 9 September 1940, bombing of Tel Aviv caused 137 deaths. According to the 1947 UN Partition Plan that proposed dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Tel Aviv, by then a city of 230,000, was slated for inclusion in the Jewish state. Jaffa with, as of 1945, a population of 101,580 people, 53,930 of whom were Muslim and 16,800 Christian, making up the Arab population, and 30,820 Jewish, was designated as part of the Arab state. The Arabs, however, rejected the partition plan. Between 1947 and 1948, tensions grew on the border between Tel Aviv and Jaffa, with Arab snipers who were firing at Jews from the “minaret” of the Hassan Bek Mosque. The Haganah and Irgun Jewish forces retaliated with a siege on Jaffa From April 1948, the Arab residents began to leave. When Jaffa was conquered by Israeli forces on May 14, few remained. The inscription on a memorial on Rothschild Boulevard to Tel Aviv’s founders translates as, “I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, oh Virgin of Israel”. By the time of Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, the population of Tel Aviv had risen to more than 200,000. Tel Aviv was the temporary government center of the State of Israel until the government moved to Jerusalem in December 1949. However, due to the international dispute over the status of Jerusalem, most foreign embassies remained in or near Tel Aviv. In the early 1980s, 13 embassies in Jerusalem moved to Tel Aviv as part of the UN’s measures responding to Israel’s 1980 Jerusalem Law. Today, all but two of the national embassies are in Tel Aviv or the surrounding district. The boundaries of Tel Aviv and Jaffa became a matter of contention between the Tel Aviv municipality and the Israeli government during 1948. The former wished to incorporate only the northern Jewish suburbs of Jaffa, while the latter wanted a more complete unification. The issue also had international sensitivity, since the main part of Jaffa was in the Arab portion of the United Nations Partition Plan, whereas Tel Aviv was not, and no armistice agreements had yet been signed. On 10 December 1948, the government announced the annexation to Tel Aviv of Jaffa’s Jewish suburbs, the ex-Arab neighborhood of Abu Kabir, the ex-Arab village of Salama and some of its agricultural land, and the Jewish ‘Hatikva’ slum. On 25 February 1949, the abandoned Arab village of Sheikh Muanis was also annexed to Tel Aviv. On 18 May 1949, the former Arab neighborhood of Manshiya and part of Jaffa’s central zone were added, for the first time including land that had been in the Arab portion of the UN partition plan. The government decided on a permanent unification of Tel Aviv and Jaffa on 4 October 1949, but the actual unification was delayed until 24 April 1950 due to concerted opposition from Tel Aviv’s mayor Israel Rokach.[The name of the unified city was Tel Aviv until 19 August 1950, when it was renamed as Tel Aviv-Yafo in order to preserve the historical name Jaffa. Tel Aviv thus grew to 42 square kilometers (16.2 sq mi). In 1949, a memorial to the 60 founders of Tel Aviv was constructed. Over the past 60 years, Tel Aviv has developed into a secular, liberal-minded city with a vibrant nightlife and café culture. In the 1960s, some of Tel Aviv's older buildings were demolished and replaced by the country's first high-rises, among them the Shalom Meir Tower, which was Israel's tallest building until 1999. Tel Aviv's population peaked in the early 1960s at 390,000, representing 16 percent of the country's total. A long period of steady decline followed, however, and by the late 1980s the city had an aging population of 317,000. High property prices pushed families out and deterred young people from moving in. At this time, gentrification began in the poor neighborhoods of Southern Tel Aviv, and the old port in the north was renewed. New laws were introduced to protect Modernist buildings, and efforts to preserve them were aided by UNESCO recognition of the Tel Aviv's White City as a world heritage site. In the early 1990s, the decline in population was reversed, partly due to the large wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tel Aviv also began to emerge as a high-tech center.The construction of many skyscrapers and high-tech office buildings followed. In 1993, Tel Aviv was categorized as a world city. The city is regarded as a strong candidate for global city status. On November 4, 1995, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated at a rally in Tel Aviv in support of the Oslo peace accord. The outdoor plaza where this occurred, formerly known as Kikar Malchei Yisrael, was renamed Rabin Square. In the first Gulf War, in 1991, Tel Aviv was attacked and hit by several Scud rockets from Iraq, but there were few casualties and no fatalities. The inhabitants of the southeastern suburb of HaTiqwa erected an angel-monument as a sign of their gratitude, that "it was through a great miracle, that many people were preserved from being killed by a direct hit of a Scud rocket." Tel Aviv has suffered from violence by Palestinian militant groups since the post-First Intifada period. The first suicide attack in Tel Aviv occurred on October 19, 1994, on the Line 5 bus, when a bomber killed himself and 21 civilians as part of a Hamas suicide campaign. The most deadly attack occurred on June 1, 2001, during the Second Intifada, when a suicide bomb exploded inside a nightclub called the Dolphi Disco, and 21 were killed and more than 100 were injured. The most recent attack in the city occurred on April 17, 2006, when nine people were killed and at least 40 wedding photographer Hampshire wounded in a suicide bombing near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv. In recent years, Tel Aviv has become more environmentally aware. City lights were turned off in support of Earth Hour in March 2008. In February 2009, the municipality launched a water saving campaign, including competition granting free parking for a year to the household that is found to have consumed the least amount of water per person. In 2009, Tel Aviv celebrated its official centennial. In addition to city- and country-wide celebrations, this anniversary saw the public release of several significant digital collections of historical materials. These include the History section of the official Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Year website; the Ahuzat Bayit collection, which focuses on the founding families of Tel Aviv, and includes photographs and biographies; and Stanford University's Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv Collection, documenting the history of the city. The last of these consists of several thousand photographs, postcards, posters, books, and other historical documents from the 100-year history of Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is located around 32°5?N 34°48?E? / ?32.083°N 34.8°E? / 32.083; 34.8 on the Israeli Mediterranean coastal plain, the historic land bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa. Immediately north of the ancient port of Jaffa, Tel Aviv lies on land that used to be sand dunes and as such has relatively poor soil fertility. The land has been flattened and has no important gradients; its most notable geographical features are bluffs above the Mediterranean coastline and the Yarkon River mouth. Because of the expansion of Tel Aviv and the Gush Dan region, absolute borders between Tel Aviv and Jaffa and between the city's neighborhoods do not exist. The city is 60 kilometers (37 mi) northwest of Jerusalem and 90 kilometers (56 mi) south of the northern port city of Haifa. Neighboring cities and towns include Herzliya to the north, Ramat HaSharon to the northeast, Petah Tikva, Bnei Brak, Ramat Gan and Giv'atayim to the east, Holon to the southeast, and Bat Yam to the south.[59] The city is economically stratified between the north and south. South Tel Aviv is generally considered to be poorer than Northern Tel Aviv with the exception of the Neve Tzedek neighborhood and some recent development by the Jaffa beach. It also includes the city’s “downtown.” Central Tel Aviv includes Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Center and is also an important financial and commerce district that stretches along the part of Ramat Gan on the Ayalon Highway. The northern side of Tel Aviv is home to Tel Aviv University and some of Tel Aviv’s most costly upper class residential neighborhoods such as Ramat Aviv, Ramat Aviv Bet and Ramat Aviv backlinks Gimmel. The prosperity of the north stretches to neighboring Herzliya Pituah, Ramat HaSharon, and Kfar Shmaryahu. Tel Aviv has a Mediterranean climate with hot, rainless, yet humid summers, pleasant to erratic springs and autumns, and typically cool, rainy winters (Köppen climate classification Csa). Humidity tends to be high year-round due to the city’s proximity to the sea. In winter, average temperatures are usually between 9 °C (48 °F) and 17 °C (63 °F), with temperatures as low as 6 °C (43 °F) on colder mornings. In summer the average is 26 °C (79 °F), with daytime temperatures sometimes exceeding 32 °C (90 °F). Despite the high humidity, precipitation during summertime is rare. Tel Aviv averages 530.7 millimeters (20.9 in) of precipitation annually which usually occur from September through May. Winter is the wettest season, with thunderstorms which occur often. Snow is rare, with the last snowfall occurring in February 1950. Tel Aviv enjoys long daytime hours with more than 300 sunny days a year.