“Tel Aviv is at the flicks”, mocks the song from 1948, describing the functioning of the first Hebrew city during the War of Independence. But the reality was quite different: Tel Aviv, the heart of the Jewish Yishuv, dispatched a disproportionately high number of fighters; home front, air, and sea battles were decided there. Yet it has not found its unifying narrative.

In the epic of Israel’s national revival, certain place names are engraved as symbols of the War of Independence: Metzudat Koah in the Galilee, the tank at Kibbutz Degania, Gush Etzion, the bullet-riddled water tower of Kibbutz Negba, and, above all, the rusted-out armored cars of Sha’ar Hagai (Bab el-Wad), which cleared the way to the besieged city of Jerusalem.

And Tel Aviv, then the center of the Yishuv? Was the Declaration of Independence the one and seminal moment of Tel Aviv’s role in the establishment of the State?

Granted, Tel Aviv was relatively secure while the yoke of self-sacrifice fell to the isolated settlements surrounded by a threatening Arab population: Mishmar Hayarden, Mishmar Haemek, Beit Ha’arava, Atarot, Nitzanim, Kfar Darom, and others. Unlike the cities with mixed Arab-Jewish populations (Jerusalem, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed), there were no house-to-house street battles in Tel Aviv. Nonetheless, severe battles ravaged the outlying Jewish neighborhoods approaching Jaffa, and many residents of those neighborhoods were forced to flee their homes. From the onset of the War of Independence, danger loomed over the periphery of Tel Aviv, as well as over the 2,600 residents of Bat Yam, Mikveh Yisrael, and the Moledet neighborhood at the edge of Holon.

This article will approach the role of Tel Aviv from two angles; first, we will sketch the facts of Tel Aviv’s role in the War of Independence. Secondly, we will attempt to trace the collective consciousness and the municipal attempts at commemoration, noting their failure to express the part played by Tel Aviv in the war.

 

The War in Tel Aviv

At the dawn of 1948, Tel Aviv was the largest Jewish city under the British Mandate, and neighboring Jaffa was its largest Arab city. According to the geographer Dr. Arnon Golan, the population of Tel Aviv (including the Jewish neighborhoods such as Florentin and Maccabi, which were technically in Jaffa) at that time numbered 235,000 Jews while in Jaffa there were 73,000 Arabs. The Arab towns bordering on Tel Aviv had 12,000 residents (Salama had 7,600, Sheikh Munis had 1,200, Al-Jammasin al-Sharqi had 1,200, and Al-Mas’udiyya had 830 residents). The Arab historian Aref al-Aref corroborated this in his study Al-Nakba (The Tragedy of Palestine, Beirut), where he notes that Jaffa had over 70,000 Arabs.

According to geographer Dr. Aryeh Yodfat, however, an analysis of the population of Tel Aviv from January, 1948 reveals that there were 248,300 Jews living there (28.4% of the overall Jewish population in the Land of Israel at the time). The statistical discrepancies result from the demographic shifts that took place at the beginning of 1948 – the flight of the Jewish population from Jaffa neighborhoods to Tel Aviv, the flight of most of the Arab population, and the absorption of masses of Jewish immigrants.

According to UN Resolution 181 from November 29, 1947 (the Partition Plan), Jerusalem would become an international city, and Jaffa, including its port, was to remain an enclave within the Arab state. With the acceptance of the Partition Plan, the two cities squared off against each other; as Tel Aviv broke out into hora circles in Magen David Square on Allenby Street, saber-rattling slogans emanated from the Seraya, the governor’s palace in Jaffa.

The next day, hostilities broke out under the British Mandate between the Arab population and the Jewish Yishuv.