Jaffa Is Tel Aviv’s Unexpected Luxury Hotspot

The author wrote “In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, most of Jaffa’s Arab residents were forcibly removed from their homes.” this is a bold faced lie. The fact is that the Arabs of Jaffa attacked the civilians of Tel Aviv after the UN voted to partition Palestine in 1947. The first attacks were sniper fire from the tops of the mosques over looking Tel Aviv. The Jews COUNTER- Attack led to hand to hand fighting in the streets, alleyways and terror bases (Arab homes and mosques) of Jaffa and this together with the calls of the Arab leaders to leave Israel in 1948 and let the surroundings arab armies invade and murder all the Jews allowing for their return led to a mass exodus of most of the Arab population of Jaffa. Those who ignored these calls by their own leaders, and those Arabs who did not attack the Jews, stayed, and became Israeli citizens.

@Amy Virshup Abu-Lughod then goes on to note that most Arabs in Jaffa and elsewhere seemed confident that “as the country belonged to the Arabs, they were the ones who would defend their homeland with zeal and patriotism, which the Jews – being of many scattered countries and tongues, and moreover being divided into Ashkenazi and Sephardic – would inevitably lack. In short, there was a belief that the Jews were generally cowards.” When this belief proved mistaken, people started to leave Jaffa. According to Abu-Lughod, at first mainly the rich left, but as more and more people began to flee the fighting, the “National Committee…decided to levy a tax on every family who insisted on leaving.” Abu-Lughod volunteered to help with collecting this “tax:” Abu-Lughod himself stayed in Jaffa until May 3, when he left by ship together with two friends to make the short trip to Beirut. By July 1948, he was already back with his family in Nablus, from where he soon made his way to the US to study and to build a successful career at Northwestern University. He left there in 1992 to become vice-president of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. As Abu-Lughod’s account illustrates, the majority of Jaffa’s Arab residents fled the fighting over a period of several weeks or even months – by land or by sea – while Jaffa’s self-proclaimed defenders tried to exploit those who wanted to leave by demanding a “tax.” 2/

@Amy Virshup Historian Efraim Karsh writes: In Jaffa, Palestine’s largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods. As for the Palestinian Arab leaders themselves, they hastened to get themselves out of Palestine and to stay out at the most critical moment. Taking a cue from these higher-ups, local leaders similarly rushed en masse through the door. High Commissioner Cunningham summarized what was happening with quintessential British understatement: You should know that the collapsing Arab morale in Palestine is in some measure due to the increasing tendency of those who should be leading them to leave the country. . . . For instance, in Jaffa the mayor went on four-day leave 12 days ago and has not returned, and half the national committee has left. In Haifa the Arab members of the municipality left some time ago; the two leaders of the Arab Liberation Army left actually during the recent battle. Now the chief Arab magistrate has left. In all parts of the country the effendi class has been evacuating in large numbers over a considerable period and the tempo is increasing.

@Amy Virshup The New York Times' own reporting from 1948 doesn't have a hint of Jews expelling Arabs from jaffa. The Arabs fled out of fear of war. (And many stayed, including in Jaffa, without any problem.) https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/05/02/85246156.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA®ion=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article

All the many cultures that passed through and left marks on the middle east over the centuries make it vibrant. Israel has tried to deny that by covering up the story and making it only the place for one era of history: the Jewish people. Developers were able to gut old "abandoned" residences and buildings because Palestinians were expelled or those left were not allowed to get permits to maintain and expand their homes and businesses.

That is my home before were were kicked out in 1948.Now Polish Jews call our home... their home.

This article is utterly unprofessional and obtuse. Who on earth writes a piece on one of the most contested cities in Israel as if it was a luxury Disneyland? And not a word about the Arab residents of the city - its native inhabitants - who have been and continue to be displaced by the municipality, developers, up-and-coming Israeli Jews, you name it. Jaffa is a politically and economically divided and stratified city, infinity pools notwithstanding. Please do your homework and go beyond glitter and gelt. Jaffa is not only orientalist fantasy catering to the affluent.

No mention of its Arab past, more ethnic cleansing at work. Just because you don’t acknowledge history doesn’t cause it to be eradicated. And by the way are Arabs allowed to walk the streets they inhabited for a thousand years?

"so have accusations that the city’s Muslim history is being erased." Once again, Israel quietly attacking and destroying Muslim's past in the region. And for what? Luxurious pleasures.

So nice, and stolen from Palestinians.

Erase Palestinians, put in malls and luxury hotels.

My god, I know this is the Travel section, but this is about as tone-deaf and non-contextual as journalism can get. Amazing how the world is moving on from its once-delusional rose-tinted view of Israel, but pieces like these, nothing more than glitzy hasbara, still make their way into the NYTimes. "claimed by King David, the Pharaohs and even Napoleon, has for decades been in the shadow of shiny Tel Aviv." Ummm, could it possibly be worth mentioning that it was the cultural and economic heart of Palestinian society up until it was conquered and ethnically cleansed by force? Or that the "famed Jaffa orange" was harvested by the Palestinians long before Zionist immigrants expropriated the industry? or that Jaffa was long neglected as an explicit policy of the Israeli government to underfund and abandon non-Jewish Arab neighborhoods, as it continues to do across Israel. "the cradle of Judaism and Christianity” and "the biblical land of Israel" are magical catch phrases, but more fitting for the Travel section of a long bygone era when people were apathetic to colonialism and its Orientalist underpinning. Look, the world must move on, Israel exists, and Jaffa is a part of it, but the Times should at least have the decency to make cursory reference to the Palestinian identity and history of Jaffa, if only because its dispossession is painful and still raw in the minds of many non-Jewish Palestinians who no longer have claim or access to it.

Meanwhile in Gaza......

Wow! It's so pretty to see how apartheid and the institutionalized racism and abuse of Arab and African labor has turned a historical Arab town into pleasure and luxury for their oppressors! Ethnic cleansing is such a beautiful thing!!

This article egregiously omits any of the history of hundreds of years of Palestinian Jaffa, expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood during the creation of the state of Israel and the ongoing gentrification that Palestinian residents of Jaffa are facing today.

You write: In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, most of Jaffa’s Arab residents were forcibly removed from their homes. That is not true. In the British census of 1922 there was an almost equal number of Jews and Muslims there. A year earlier 47 Jews were killed and 146 were badly wounded by Arab rioters. In the 30's, many more Jews were killed by Arabs with the British looking on. The constant violence against Jews by Arabs encouraged many Jews to move elsewhere. Thus, in 1945 there were 28,000 Jews and 50, 000 Arabs left. Finally, the UN recommended that Jaffa become part of Israel but in 1947 the Arabs were given this as Palestine. The Arabs attacked Israel in 1948, refusing to recognize the UN partition, and Jaffa was captured by Israel in its defensive war. No one was "forcibly removed from their homes." Arabs were told that when the Jews took power they would be killed and that they should leave until the Jews were driven into the sea by the victorious Arab legions. They are still waiting over 70 years later. Jaffa is Israel. If you want to visit Palestine, just drive south to Gaza and see the showcase of the Arab future there. The Palestinians wanted land. They were given it by Israel with no conditions. See what they have created. You will not find the NY Times listing it as a tourist attraction.

By the way Jaffa, or Yafa, is an Arab Palestinian city, in case you missed that.

Shame on you New York Times for being complicit in the complete erasure of the Palestinian population. Many of our families are still refugees who were forced out of Yaffa (among other parts of historic Palestine) in 1948, and we intend to return. We are still alive, many amassing on the edges of The Gaza Strip, just a few miles away, where Israel forced us to become refugees and trapped us what is now the world's largest ghetto and open-air prison. Many of those trendy art galleries and restaurants you have put in your article are our families' homes and neighborhoods. How could you be so insensitive? Erasing a population - whether by killing them physically or by killing their history - is ethnic cleansing. You are complicit, and we demand that you remove this article and tell the full story of Yaffa. We are living, breathing people, our hearts are beating and we demand our right to return.

Referring to us simply as Arabs is to deny our specific identity.

Normally I don't react to tourism articles, but this time I really must object to the cultural insensitivity of this article. Jaffa, the charming little Tel Aviv neighborhood, used to be the largest Palestinian city, before the ethnic cleansing began in 1948. I think the author should have done much more to acknowledge that heritage. Natasha Roth, a Jewish PHD history student, provides some essential historical context in 972 magazine https://972mag.com/wiping-palestinian-history-off-the-map-in-jaffa/119688/

Just no Arabs? Gentrification has completed what the state began. The article should at least mention the little that remains of Arab Jaffa!

When Netanyahu Says Israel Is 'Nation-State Of The Jewish People And Them Alone' does that mean I'm (non-Jewish) not welcome?

It’s astounding that an article on Jaffa and its history could not once mention Palestinians. “This is the cradle of Judaism and Christianity,” Mr. Gil says of the area. “Very few people seem to understand that when you talk about the biblical land of Israel, it’s all right here.” Really? Jaffa was the main urban center of Palestine. Tel Aviv was founded because the new European Jewish immigrants ( to differentiate them from those who had lived in Palestine forever) did not want to live side by side with Palestinians. Jaffa was one of the terror-purge cities in 1948. It’s well documented that the British did nothing as vast parts of the city were ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian population.

Was the inclusion of the Arab presence in the print edition? If not, will the print version publish an apology for the original version, which was a disgraceful act of cultural cleansing?

Not a single mention of the Palestinian people who were the majority in Jaffa and were expelled in the Nakba of 1948. This is a classic case of how upscale elite tourism finishes the job of ethnic cleansing without so much as a nod to the past. This article is impressive in its profound inhumanity and callous disregard for the suffering and losses of others.

This article fails to mention that Jaffa languished for so long possibly because it was the Arab ghetto of Tel Aviv. Yes, it is mixed and apparently becoming more Jewish, but there were a lot more Arabs here than in nearby areas. As relations ebbed and flowed with the Palestinians, so did some Tel Aviv’s Jewish residents’ comfort levels of being in Jaffa. The restored port area is fabulous and these new developments sound wonderful but I do hope that the old hummus bars and Arab owned businesses and the existing residents get a chance to thrive in this new era of gentrification.

article is very enlightened great photography. makes me want to go there. thank you.

I visited Jaffa port two Septembers ago while I was in Tel Aviv. I booked a Segway tour and as I was the only person with a reservation, I got the tour guide, Ruthie, all to myself. We whizzed around Jaffa on the bumpy stone sidewalks (ouch) in the bright early morning light. Jaffa is great because it’s older than Tel Aviv. You get great views of Tel Aviv from there, and the shops and restaurants are very charming. I recommend going but make sure you know your shekel conversion rates so you can tip your tour guide properly. I think I muffed this part and Ruthie ended up not sending me the photos she took of me on her phone.

Thank you to the New York Times for this lovely and timely article.