War and Postwar Transformation of Urban Areas: The 1948 War and the Incorporation of Jaffa into Tel Aviv

Abstract

War is a distinctive form of human-made catastrophe whose impact in many cases reaches far beyond the actual places of its occurrence. While regarded a catastrophe in areas exposed to acts of belligerency, in the rear war might generate a process of major development, resulting in a conclusive spatial transformation process. In both front and rear areas, the outcomes of wartime drastic processes are mostly short lived, gradually eradicated through the dynamics of postwar restoration and development. Drastic wartime events may turn cities into areas of devastation, depopulation, and misery but may also generate rapid development and change. In war-stricken areas of the stormy twentieth century, such as Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, the formation of urban spaces and the shaping of urban landscapes were consequent to interplay between drastic and dynamic processes. Wartime emergencies frequently resulted in a rapid and wide-ranging though ephemeral process of spatial change. Postwar years were times of opportunity for restoration and reshaping. The impact of drastic and dynamic wartime and postwar processes on urban areas is depicted in the case of Tel Aviv—Jaffa during and following the 1948 war.

Paths of Erasure and Trails of Resistance in aNeo‐Settler‐ColonialCity

“…In 1960, the Israeli Land Administration (ILA) was founded to manage these lands, while government housing companies managed the residences that inhabited them (Kedar and Yiftachel 2006). In Yaffa, Israel sub‐contracted the emptied houses to the semi‐private semi‐public Amidar housing company and used them to meet the housing needs of Jewish war refugees, slum inhabitants, discharged soldiers, and immigrants (Golan 2009). Meanwhile, Israel imprisoned the Palestinian population that remained in the city (around 3,647 people) in the Ajami neighbourhood, surrounded for two years by barbed‐wire fences patrolled by soldiers (Abu‐Shehadeh and Sheveita 2010).…”

Community on the Margins: The Social Consolidation of the HaTikvah Neighborhood in the Late Mandate Period and during Early Israeli Statehood

“…On 28 December 1948, the neighborhood was officially annexed into Tel Aviv [99,100]. In that year, the number of residents was about 18,000, and the building density was very high: 78% of the land was used for buildings, 20% for streets, and 2% for public needs [101,102].…”

Two languages, one variable? Pharyngeal realizations among Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals

“…Jaffa, once a stand‐alone city with a history dating back to 2000–1800 bce (Kaplan, : 73–74), became Palestine's main seaport in “the last decades of Ottoman rule, between the 1830s and the 1910s” (Golan, : 1023). Since shortly after the 1948 Nakba , it became part of the City of Tel Aviv–Jaffa, Tel Aviv itself having been established in 1909 as “the first Hebrew city” of the Modern Era.…”