Conquest through town planning: the case of Tel Aviv, 1921-48

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 36-52

  LeVine, Mark ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

PLANNING HISTORY; TOWN PLANNING; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBANIZATION;

ISRAEL; TEL AVIV;

EID: 0032413156     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2538129     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. These include Ruth Kark's Jaffa: A City in Evolution and related articles, Yosi Katz's The Business of Settlement, Private Entrepreneurship in the Jewish Settlement of Palestine, 1990-1914 and related articles, and articles and dissertation's by Ilan Troen, Gidon Biger, Iris Gracier, Iris Agmon, and Andre Mazawi. While there have been a fair number of studies of architecture in Tel Aviv, most have not looked at its relationship to the larger discourse of town planning or Zionist identity in a critical way, and only two (Tzafrir and Mazawi) have looked at architecture in Jaffa.
2. For a more detailed analysis of this phenomena, see Mark LeVine, "The Discourses of Development in Mandate Palestine," Arab Studies Quarterly 17, nos. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 1995), pp. 95-121.
3. Mulk lands, which were confined mostly to urban areas, were privately owned land which could be disposed of as the owner saw fit. Miri land was state-owned land which occupiers had permanent usufruct rights as long as they cultivated it and paid the tithe. Until 1913, miri owners had to get special permission from the state to use miri land for industrial purposes, or even for vineyards or orchards or dwellings, as the state believed (mistakenly) that these restrictions would keep the largest amount of land available for agriculture [Kenneth Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-39 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 11]. Waqf lands were dedicated to religious or charitable purposes. In addition to the six official categories of land, another important classification in use in Palestine was the musha'a system, which essentially meant collective village ownership or tenure of a plot of land, with the land being redistributed on a periodic basis so that all members of the community had equal access to the best land. Musha'a came under more criticism by the British and Zionists than perhaps any other form of tenure in Palestine, as they believed that collective ownership prevented the capitalization of land that was the prerequisite for privatization and modernization of the agricultural sector.
4. Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-39, p. 13.
5. Survey of Palestine (1946-1947; reprint, Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991), pp. 226, 233.
6. In Ottoman times land was designated as matruka by an imperial decree, or firman.
7. Israeli State Archives [ISA], M56/ 236/D119 and M34/34/L280/299.
8. The high commissioner's Executive Council noted in September 1935 that "the proposal to grant a general power to change the category of Metrouke land would give rise to popular suspicion as to the use to be made of that power. It was likely to excite fear among Arabs that the power would be employed for the purpose of bringing Arab common land into Jewish hands" (memo to Chief Secretary, 16 September 1935, ISA, M56/236/D119 and M34/34/L280/299).
9. In a case heard at the Jaffa Land Court in 1926, the presiding judge declared that "cultivation . . . must be effective and 'maintained.' Operations must be carried out which result in a permanent and definite change in the quality of the land. The wilderness must be made to blossom" [Frederic M. Goadby and Moses J. Doukhan The Land Law of Palestine (Jerusalem: 1935), pp. 48-49]. Emphasis added.
10. Goadby and Doukhan, Land Law of Palestine, pp. 38-39.
11. By the Palestine (Amendment) Order in Council 1933, article 16A.
12. Moses J. Doukhan, "Land Tenure," in Said Himadeh, ed., The Economic Organization of Palestine (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1938), p. 79.
13. Martin Bunton, "The Role of Private Property in the British Administration of Palestine" (D.Phil, diss., Oxford University, 1997), pp. 26, 75.
14. Often from Turkish to French to English.
15. This began as early as the next year with the Amended Land Transfer Ordinance in 1921 [Barbara Smith, The Roots of Separatism in Palestine (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), p. 92].
16. Minute to Secretary of State for the Colonies by the High Commissioner Wauchope (2 January 1932), Public Record Office [PRO] Colonial Office [CO] 733/214/87402.
17. "Development Scheme and Report of Mr. French," by O. G. R. Williams (14 January 1932), PRO CO 733/214/97049.
18. Letter to High Commissioner Wauchope from the Secretary of State for the Colonies (29 January 1932), PRO CO 733/214.
19. Roger Owen, "The Role of Musha'a (Co-Ownership) in the Politico-Legal History of Mandatory Palestine," SSRC Workshop on Law, Property, and State Power, Buyukada, September 1991, p. 7.
20. Bunton, "The Role of Private Property" p. 9.
21. Scott Atran, "The Surrogate Colonization of Palestine, 1917-1939," American Ethnologist 16, no. 14 (1989), p. 737.
22. Survey of Palestine, p. 234. Emphasis in original.
23. Quoted in Atran, "The Surrogate Colonization," p. 725.
24. Town-Planning Handbook of Palestine, 1930 (New York Public Library, SERA), p. 5. See Falastin (27 February 1923), p. 3, for article on the new land ownership law enacted by the Jaffa municipality.
25. Town-Planning Handbook of Palestine, 1930 (New York Public Library, SERA), p. 5. See Falastin (27 February 1923), p. 3, for article on the new land ownership law enacted by the Jaffa municipality.
26. Y. Shiffman, "Tel Aviv: Today and Tomorrow," Palestine and Near East (September 1942), p. 167.
27. Ibid.
28. As Tel Aviv's first and most famous mayor, Meir Dizengoff, later described it [Meir Dizengoff, To the Friends of My Youth (Tel Aviv: 1931), pp. 6-7 (in Hebrew)].
29. Undated memo in Hebrew on the history of Tel Aviv's borders and development, Tel Aviv Municipal Archive [TAMA], 4/2667b.
30. Quoted in A. Droyanov, Sefer Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv: Sefer Tel Aviv Society, 1935), p. 77. See also Arthur Ruppin, Memoirs, Diaries, Letters (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p. 121.
31. Quoted in A. Droyanov, Sefer Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv: Sefer Tel Aviv Society, 1935), p. 77. See also Arthur Ruppin, Memoirs, Diaries, Letters (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p. 121.
32. Ruth Kark, Jaffa, A City in Evolution, 1799-1917 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Tzvi Press, 1990), p. 124.
33. Yosi Katz, The Business of Settlement, Private Entrepreneurship in the Jewish Settlement of Palestine, 1900-1914 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), p. 287.
34. Yusef Heykal, Days of Juvenility (Amman: Dar al-Galil Press, 1988), p. 77 [in Arabic].
35. The high commissioner had the authority to constitute a council in a quarter distinguished by its needs and character from the rest of the municipal area. In a 15 December 1920 dispatch, the commissioner of lands suggested Tel Aviv "immediately" be declared "a town as distinct from Jaffa" in order to fight land speculation and ensure development according to a well-ordered plan. TAMA 1/164.
36. The population of Tel Aviv more than doubled, from 16,000 to 38,000 between 1923 and 1926, while land prices increased 250-fold from the city's origins to the mid-1920s. Between 1923 and 1939 the city area increased ninefold, with land purchases concentrated in the north and east of the city and south of Jaffa [Abraham Granott, Land Policy in Palestine (1937; reprint, Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1940), p. 79].
37. Yediot Tel Aviv, nos. 6-7 (1928), p. 49.
38. Despatch from H. C. Luke, Acting Officer Administering the Government, dated 9 August 1928, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, PRO CO 733/158/7.
39. Yediot Tel Aviv, nos. 6-7, (1934), p. 252.
40. Cf. Iris Graitzer, "Workers Neighborhoods: Attempts at Shaping an Urban Landscape through Social Ideologies in Eretz Israel during the Mandate Period" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1982), p. 138.
41. Milhama, the Hebrew word for "war," was the term used to describe the struggle to expand the city's borders (Cf. Central Zionist Archives [CZA], S25/ 5936).
42. Yediot Tel Aviv, no. 12, (1943), p. 154.
43. "Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine," PRO, Government of Palestine Air Force (AIR) 5/1244/43820.
44. Memo on proposed changes of boundaries between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, undated but probably 1934, TAMA, 4/2667b.
45. Letter to Registrar of Lands, Jaffa (24 December 1930), TAMA, 4/2667a.
46. Explanatory notes in connection with the proposed skeleton town planning scheme for the land situated east of Tel Aviv, TAMA, 4/2662b.
47. Ibid., 3, emphasis added. (Worded as if the region had once been "constructed" but because of Arab backwardness, fell into disuse or dilapidation.)
48. TAMA, 4/2667b.
49. Minutes of Meeting dated 13 July 1937, TAMA, 4/2667b.
50. Ibid.
51. Shiftman, "Tel Aviv: Today and Tomorrow," p. 178.
52. Interview with Y. Shiffman, Palestine and Sear East magazine, January 1943, p. 12.
53. Cf. Iris Graitzer, "Workers Neighborhoods."
54. Cf. ISA, M/18/LD8/3411, letters from 1929.
55. The villagers' counsel "[did] not deny that the area is bounded by Sand Dunes, but they do not cover all the land we claim. It has not been planted with trees but vegetables and there are two wells now covered by sand." ISA, M/18/ LD8/3411, letters from 1929.
56. Barbara Smith writes that "Not only did British officials misread the previous land laws, but they failed fully to understand local agricultural practices and appreciate the unusual post-war conditions" [Smith, The Roots of Separatism, p. 99].
57. The Survey of Western Palestine of 1878 noted that only a few feet under the sands was very fertile soil, while Kallner and Rosenau wrote that "almost everywhere the coastal plain has sufficient underground water at moderate depths" [D. H. Kallner and E. Rosenau, "The Geographical Regions of Palestine," The Geographical Review 29 (1939), p. 63].
58. ISA, M/48/G184/3529 (16 May 1927), Land Appeal No. 171/26.
59. Letter from the Director of Lands to the Department of Agriculture dated 7 February 1928, ISA, M/18/LD8/3411.
60. Note that one dunam equals four acres. Archive of the Labor Movement, IV/219/B/292.
61. Yediot Tel Aviv, no. 12, (1943), p. 148.
62. At a meeting of representatives of Tel Aviv municipality, Vad Leumi, Jewish Agency, and residents of Jaffa's Jewish neighborhoods, Mayor Rokach confessed that he told the district commissioner that he wished he could "blow up" a planned Jewish market that would sell Arab produce (16 May 1940), CZA, S25/5936.
63. "Jewish Agency Observations on the French Report," PRO CO 733/230.
64. Yediot Tel Aviv, no. 12, (1943), p. 151.
65. ISA, M/44/89/L/308; cf. ISA, 2/183/ 37.
66. Unsigned note dated 21 June 1945, ISA, M/44/89/L/308.
67. Note by Solicitor General dated 4 March 1947, ISA, M/46/L176316.
68. Ibid., note dated 6 June 1947.
69. Stein, The Land Question, pp. 212-13. He goes on to say that "the Arabs' primary experience was of survival against nature, and they had little experience in confronting the bureaucratic and legislative machinery introduced by the Ottomans and the British."
70. One such petition by villagers whose lands lay in the Jammasin (al-Sharqi) village between Jarisha and Petakh Tikva declared that "whereas [our] cattle have, since time immemorial, been grazing in the said lands and whereas they have no other grazing land for [our] cattle and whereas almost all the inhabitants of the said village live on the milk and butter they raise from their cattle . . . therefore the grazing lands are indispensable and necessary for them." Petition dated 13 April 1930, on letterhead of the Jaffa Waqf Administration, ISA, M/ 46/L176316.
71. Bunton, "The Role of Private Property," p. 33.
72. Stein suggests that it was the small notable landowning and land-benefiting class whose livelihoods were threatened by the British management of the land market who were most vocal during the 1921 revolt (Stein, The Land Question, p. 49).
73. ISA, M/44/89/L/308.
74. al-Jami at al-Islamiyya, 21 December 1937, p. 3.
75. The eleven roads projected under the plan literally carve up the lands of Shaykh Muwannis for the benefit of Tel Aviv residents, while at the same time creating an industrial zone in what was an agricultural village.
76. Petition signed by "villagers of Shaykh Muwannis" to Lydda Town Planning Commission (10 November 1939), ISA, Z/183/37.
77. Ibid.
78. The clippings were collected in a Haganah report, "Yediot me-Yafo" (5 March 1944), Haganah Archive, [HHA], 105/204.
79. Letter dated 6 December 1930, ISA, Z/183/37.
80. Stein, The Land Question, p. 178. The list included mayors Es-Said, Alfred Rok, and 'Omar al-Baytar; the latter's brother, 'Abdul Raouf; Abu-Khadra; Yaqub Dallal; and others. According to Stein, no lands in the Jaffa subdistrict in the early 1930s belonged to absentee landlords, and except for one parcel by Es-Said, the lands sold by the Jaffa notables were not in the Jaffa area.
81. Review of Palestine Press (4 August 1944), ISA, M/12/1/46 DEM/122.
82. Ibid., Telegram to the High Commissioner from 26 Jaffa Notables, undated.
83. Letter to High Commissioner dated 20 March 1947, ISA, M/RG2/564/18.
84. Minutes of meeting between District Commissioner Macpherson and unidentified Zionist official dated 5 February 1940, CZA, S25/5936.
85. For an in-depth discussion of the struggles over the Auja River, the Jaffa and Tel Aviv ports, and Jaffa's Jewish neighborhoods, see an earlier draft of this article appearing on the official Jaffa web site, http:///www.yafa.org.
86. Undated essay by Kauffmann, part of his private papers collection, CZA, A175/96C.