Jaffa

The Canaanites established the city of Jaffa in the 4th BC, and since then it has been an important commercial center for the region. It was under the rule of the Pharaohs, who occupied it, as well as under Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian rule before BC. Then, the Roman and Byzantine occupied this city.

When the Islamic conquest entered Palestine, Amr ibn al-As conquered Jaffa in the same year that Umar ibn al-Khattab entered Jerusalem. Jaffa remained an important city in Palestine under Islamic rule and remained a major commercial center and a port for Jerusalem and a harbor for pilgrims. After that, it came under Crusader rule, and then in 1517 it became under Ottoman rule. With the collapse of Ottoman rule and its defeat in World War I, it came under British mandate.

After the declaration of the British mandate over Palestine, a wave of Jewish migration began to flow into the port of Jaffa, and their numbers increased significantly, most of them being from the poor classes coming from Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, Bolshevik and Communist calls spread among them, and most of them belonged to the Histadrut or the Jewish Labor Union. Then the implementation of the Zionist colonial plan began in Palestine.

The partition decision gave 55% of the land of Palestine to the Jewish state, including the central coastal strip (from Ashdod to Haifa approximately, except for the city of Jaffa) and most of the area of the Negev desert (except for the city of Beersheba and a strip on the Egyptian border). The project to divide Palestinian land was based on the locations of Jewish clusters so that those clusters remained within the borders of the Jewish state.

On January 4, 1948, Jewish organizations carried out a major criminal act by blowing up the « Government House » in the city center, which was the headquarters of the Department of Social Affairs, using a car bomb. A large number of casualties and injuries occurred. On May 15, 1948, British forces withdrew from the city, and Zionist Jewish forces entered the city, looting and seizing whatever they found after defeating the resistance fighters in Jaffa.

This situation continued until Jewish organizations carried out the occupation of Jaffa on April 26, 1948, which they called « Operation Dror, » resulting in the displacement of most of the city’s Arab population. The Palestinian urban space underwent radical changes as a result of the 1948 war and the establishment of the State of Israel. In this context, observers described these changes, or specifically the Palestinian Nakba, as a « rupture, » which caused the destruction and demolition of the Palestinian city and its modernity.

In 1950, Tel Aviv municipality annexed Jaffa to its authority, becoming a single municipality called Tel Aviv-Jaffa, where Arabs make up about 2% of the population. From the outset, Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality implemented a plan to Judaize the place by changing all street names in Jaffa to Hebrew names of Zionist movement leaders or names unrelated to its history. They also worked to change the architectural style of the place by demolishing a large part of old buildings and entire neighborhoods and villages.