Annexation or Separation? The Municipal Status of the Jewish Neighborhoods of Jaffa 1940–1944

Abstract

The 1936 disturbances in Palestine produced one of the most complex and sensitive problems on the local level, which exercised the British authorities until the end of the Mandate period. The demand of the residents of the Jewish neighborhoods of Jaffa to be annexed to Tel-Aviv, and separated from the Jaffa jurisdiction, was the core of the problem. From a local issue, annexation rapidly became a concern of the Yishuv as a whole, its institutions being unremittingly engaged in it as a Zionist/Yishuv struggle of the highest order. Clearly, in the time of the Arab revolt no solution was possible. The lull in the Jewish-Arab conflict following the close of that chapter allowed for the first time a dialogue among the parties to the annexation question in an attempt to resolve it. The article dissects the problem from the viewpoint of each of the three parties concerned from 1940 to 1944, a period that yielded a unique and significant breakthrough.