Jaffa
After the 1948 Palestine War, most of its Arab population fled or were expelled, and the city became part of then newly established state of Israel, and was unified into a single municipality with Tel Aviv in 1950.
[4] Ancient Jaffa was built on a 40 metres (130 ft) high kurkar sandstone ridge,[5] with a broad view of the coastline, giving it a strategic importance in military history.
In retaliation, Judas Maccabeus attacked Jaffa, setting the harbor on fire, destroying ships, and killing many inhabitants, though he did not attempt to hold the city.
In 143 BCE, Simon Thassi established a garrison in Jaffa, expelled the non-Jewish inhabitants to prevent them from collaborating with the Seleucid commander Tryphon, and fortified the city.
[11][12] Under Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE), Jaffa was one of several coastal cities controlled by the Jews, including Straton's Tower, Apollonia, Iamnia, and Gaza.
[10] Archaeological remains from the Roman period are mainly found near the harbor, including rich finds like terra sigillata, a bread or cheese stamp, and coins.
[10] The New Testament account of Saint Peter bringing back to life the widow Dorcas (recorded in Acts of the Apostles, 9:36–42, takes place in Jaffa, then called in Greek Ἰόππη (Latinized as Joppa).
Acts 10:10–23 relates that, while Peter was in Jaffa, he had a vision of a large sheet filled with "clean" and "unclean" animals being lowered from heaven, together with a message from the Holy Spirit telling him to accompany several messengers to Cornelius in Caesarea Maritima.
[26] An inscription from the White Mosque of Ramla, today visible in the Great Mosque of Gaza,[27] commemorates the event:In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate,...gave power to his servant...who has trust in him...who fights for Him and defends the faith of His Prophet...Sultan of Islam and the Muslims, Baybars...who came out with his victorious army on the 10th of the month of Rajab from the land of Egypt, resolved to carry out jihad and combat the intransigent infidels.
The sea enters the town, forming a poor and shallow harbor: it is dangerous to remain there long for fear of being driven onshore by a gust of wind.
When any pilgrims disembark there, interpreters and other officers of the sultan instantly hasten to ascertain their numbers, to serve them as guides, and to receive, in the name of their master, the customary tribute.
During the 18th century, the coastline around Jaffa was often besieged by pirates and this led to the inhabitants relocating to Ramla and Lod, where they relied on messages from a solitary guard house to inform them when ships were approaching the harbour.
[citation needed] The governor who was appointed after the devastation brought about by Napoleon, Muhammad Abu-Nabbut, commenced wide-ranging building and restoration work in Jaffa, including the Mahmoudiya Mosque and the public fountain known as Sabil Abu Nabbut.
[38] American missionary Ellen Clare Miller, visiting Jaffa in 1867, reported that the town had a population of "about 5000, 1000 of these being Christians, 800 Jews and the rest Moslems".
[43] Other factories produced orange-crates, barrels, corks, noodles, ice, seltzer, candy, soap, olive oil, leather, alkali, wine, cosmetics and ink.
Today,[dubious – discuss] along with the navel and bitter orange, it is one of three main varieties of the fruit grown in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Southern Europe.
In 1902, a study of the growth of the orange industry by Zionist officials outlined the different Palestinian owners and their primary export markets as England, Turkey, Egypt and Austria-Hungary.
While the traditional Arabic cultivation methods were considered "primitive," an in-depth study of the financial expenditure involved reveals that they were ultimately more cost-efficient than the Zionist-European enterprises that followed them some two decades later.
[65] After the start of the general strike, British troops stationed in Palestine were bolstered by reinforcements from Malta and Egypt to subdue rioting which had broken out in several major Palestinian cities.
Arab rioters in Jaffa used the Old City, which contained a maze of homes, winding alleyways and an underground sewer system, to escape arrest by British security forces.
[65] On June of that year, Royal Air Force bombers dropped boxes of leaflets in Arabic on Jaffa, requesting the city's inhabitants to evacuate that same day.
In 1945, the Jewish community of Jaffa complained to the city mayor Yousef Haikal that their neighbourhoods don't receive appropriate municipal services (street lighting and paving, garbage removal, sewerage etc.)
[78] On 4 January 1948, the Lehi detonated a truck bomb outside the Saraya, also known as the "Grand Serai," formerly the Ottoman administrative building and now housing the Arab National Committee.
[95] The issue also had international sensitivity, since the main part of Jaffa was in the Arab portion of the United Nations Partition Plan, whereas Tel Aviv was not, and no armistice agreements had yet been signed.
[94] On 10 December 1948, the government announced the annexation to Tel Aviv of Jaffa's Jewish suburbs of Maccabi (American–German Colony), Volovelsky (northwestern Florentin), Giv'at Herzl, and Shapira; territories outside Jaffa's municipal boundary, specifically the Arab neighbourhood of Abu Kabir, the Arab village of Salama and some of its agricultural land, and the working class Jewish areas of Hatikva and Ezra, were annexed to Tel Aviv at the same time, thus introducing around 50,000 new residents into the city.
[94] The two sides came to an agreement under which the government covered 100K I£ of the unified municipality's expenses, as well as funded healthcare, education, and social services for Jaffa residents directly from the state budget.
Parts of the Old City have been renovated, turning Jaffa into a tourist attraction featuring old restored buildings, art galleries, theaters, souvenir shops, restaurants, sidewalk cafes and promenades.
Excavations on Rabbi Pinchas Street, for example, in the flea market have revealed walls and water conduits dating to the Iron Age, Hellenistic, Early Islamic, Crusader and Ottoman periods.
In December 2020, archaeologists from the IAA revealed a 3,800-year-old jar containing the badly preserved remains of a baby dates back to the Middle Bronze Age.
[132] Researchers also covered the remains of at least two horses and pottery dated to the late Ottoman Empire, 232 seashells, 30 Hellenistic coins, 95 glass vessel fragments from the Roman and Crusader periods 14 fifth-century BCE rock-carved burials featuring lamps.
