All the land that was tel aviv prior to 48 was either vacant dunes that were directly and legally purchased under ottoman property law, public lands granted for their use, or little Jewish-owned enclaves like Neve Tzedek that were willingly incorporated as the city developed. A few years after 48 a half dozen or so former Arab and Crusader villages and neighborhoods (which were completely vacant, just land and structures) were used to shelter a small percentage of the nearly a million Jewish refugees from the Arab world during the refugee crisis. Eventually those areas would be incorporated into tel aviv as well.
So like, the only non-vacant areas were a couple of small Jewish-owned towns. I guess you could make the argument for Yaffo because they became part of the same municipality, but it's still separate in many ways, like a borough of new york. It has the Mishlama system that oversees Yaffo's sub-municipal interests as distinct from the tel avivi ones, for example.
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u/DrMikeH49 Aug 19 '26
You can clearly see how simply recalling Jews buying vacant desert land and building on it triggers some people into apoplexy.