History of Tel Aviv

The settlement in the area of modern southern Tel Aviv (the neighbourhoods of Neve Shalom and Neve Tsedek) was started in the 1880s as a substitute for the rather expensive Arab neighbourhoods of Jaffa. However the city of Tel Aviv itself was established only in 1909 as Ahuzat Bayit and was later renamed to Tel Aviv. At its founding, Tel Aviv was intended only to be a suburb, a bedroom community, with the workers commuting to Jaffa.

However, a dispute broke out between the Jews of Tel Aviv and the Arabs of Jaffa in 1921 or thereabouts, which led the denizens of Tel Aviv to create a new central business district. Owing to its proximity to the port of Jaffa, and its status as the first Jewish community that immigrants saw when coming into the country, Tel Aviv quickly grew to become the centre of Israeli urban life, and it remains so to this day.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, for a period of eight months (May-December 1948) during the Arab blockade of Jerusalem it also served as the temporary capital of Israel. Tel Aviv and suburbs house embassies of most countries that maintain relations with Israel, some always remaining in the region and thirteen moving there in the early eighties . In 1950 Tel Aviv and Jaffa were united in the single municipality Tel Aviv-Yafo.