Ask yourself what was Tel Aviv called before Israel? Here is the short answer:
When it was founded, way before the state of Israel, Tel Aviv was called “Achuzat Bait” meaning “Estate Home” in Hebrew. The city was founded by Jews on 11 April 1909. It was renamed to “Tel-Aviv” (meaning “Spring Hill”) in 1910. The city of Tel Aviv was under the Ottoman Empire rule, replaced in 1918 by British Mandate rule – 38 years before Israel’s independence in 1948.
The photo below shows the first foundation meeting of “Achuzat Bait” on the sands of the Mediterranean coastline. The city was founded on land purchased from local Bedouins, north of the existing city of Jaffa. This photograph of 1909 shows the auction of the first lots.
as you can see, Tel Aviv was a bit of wasteland before it was founded…
Tel Aviv Before Israel
In old times, the walled city of Jaffa was the only urban center in the general area where now Tel Aviv is located in early modern times. Jaffa was an important port city in the region for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows signs of human settlement there starting in roughly 7,500 BC.
During the First immigration of European Jews to Palestine in the 1880s, when Jewish immigrants began arriving in the region in significant numbers, new neighborhoods were founded outside Jaffa on the current territory of Tel Aviv. The first was Neve Tzedek, founded in 1887 by Mizrahi Jews due to overcrowding in Jaffa. Other neighborhoods were Neve Shalom (1890), Yafa Nof (1896), Achva (1899), Ohel Moshe (1904), Kerem HaTeimanim (1906), and others. Once Tel Aviv received city status in the 1920s, those neighborhoods joined the newly formed municipality, now becoming separated from Jaffa.
Tel Aviv was granted the status of an independent municipality separate from Jaffa in 1934.
The Jewish population rose dramatically during the Fifth Aliyah (fifth wave of immigration) after the Nazis came to power in Germany. By 1937 the Jewish population of Tel Aviv had risen to 150,000, compared to Jaffa’s 69,000 residents. Within two years, it had reached 160,000, which was over a third of Palestine’s total Jewish population. Many new Jewish immigrants to Palestine disembarked in Jaffa, and remained in Tel Aviv, turning the city into a center of urban life.
After Israel’s Independence
When Israel declared its Independence on 14 May 1948, the population of Tel Aviv was over 200,000. The city was the temporary government center of the State of Israel until the government moved to Jerusalem in December 1949. Due to the international dispute over the status of Jerusalem, most embassies remained in or near Tel Aviv.
At the start of the 1948 War of Independence, the city and its periphery became the focal point of the conflict between Jews and Arabs. The fight over Jaffa’s future started immediately, with Jewish and Arab forces clashing in close quarters on both cities, with civilian populations both in Tel Aviv and Jaffa suffering and ultimately fleeting. In April 1950, Jaffa was formally merged with the Tel Aviv municipality and a unified city we know today was established – Tel Aviv-Yafo.
