Meir Diszengoff was Tel Aviv’s first mayor and one of the city’s pioneers, and it was his vision that propelled Tel Aviv to grow into the business center of the Jewish settlements.

Tel Aviv’s White City came into being during the 1930s, some 70 years before it was recognized as an official UNESCO World Heritage Site. With the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany many German Jewish architects fled the country and landed in British mandated- Palestine, and it was they who built the thousands of modern Bauhaus-style houses that can still be seen in the center of the city.

In the year leading to Israel’s declaration of independence, the Jewish leadership accepted the United Nations Partition Plan, according to which Palestine was to be devided along ethnic lines, making Tel Aviv an Israeli town and Jaffa part of the future Arab state. The Arab countries as well as the local Arab leadership rejected the plan, and after David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, declared the creation of Israel at the old Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Blvd., the armies of the Arab countries attacked the newly founded state.  As a resut of a convincing victory, Israel gained control over more territory than it was originally designed under the UN plan. Jaffa was also conquered and thousands of Arab citizens fled from and/or were driven out of the city.

Tel Aviv after Independence

In the years follwing the declaration of independence, Tel Aviv was growing at an impressive pace, both in numbers, by the 1960s the population doubled from 200,000 to 400,000, and in territory, with the annexation of abandoned nearby Arab villages. The quick growth has made Tel Aviv into Israel’s only metropolis, and all its neighbouring towns (Givataim, Ramat Gan, etc) are sometimes regarded as mere residential suburbs.

With the high-tech boom of the 1980s and 1990s, Tel Aviv saw the rise of skyscrapers and of land prices which were setting daily records. The Israeli-Arab conflict was the only thing keeping Tel Aviv from becoming the tourist powerhouse it is today, with Iraqi rockets landing during the Gulf War in 1991 and Palestinian suicide bombers exploding in the heart of the city in the mid-1990s.

In 1995, the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish right- wing zealout in the  then Kikar Malchei Israel which now bears his name, Kikar Rabin (Rabin Square). The assassination was intended to stop the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and is considered a major national trauma.

It has been years since the shaky state of regional security has had any impact on Tel Aviv, which even during wartime remains low- key by day and hectic by night. Over the years Tel Aviv has evolve into a liberal, cosmopolitan, secular and cultural center with a vibrant 24/7 nightlife, underground art scenes and an abundant café culture. It was chosen as one of the top 10 cities in the world by Lonely Planet and one of the top 10 tech cities by Newsweek.