1944 City Plan or Map of Tel Aviv, Israel (Palestine)

This is a c. 1944 city plan or map of Tel Aviv, Israel / Palestine. Composed in Hebrew for the city's ever-growing Jewish population, streets throughout the city are labeled. A street index appears along the left border.

Historical Context

The British, with the help of an Arab uprising, had driven the Ottomans out of the region in 1917. After World War I ended, Britain became responsible for the former Ottoman territories of Palestine and Transjordan. Thus, from 1920 until 1948, Palestine was known as Mandatory Palestine. During these twenty-eight years, Britain tried to assuage both Jewish and Arab nationalist movements, even proposing a partition plan. During the 1920s, Britain imposed immigration restrictions on Jewish immigrants to Palestine, along with restrictions concerning the ability of Jewish immigrants to buy land. Just before the outbreak of World War II, in what is known as the White Paper of 1939, Britain announced that a partition was no longer an option, and that Palestine would be made an independent binational state with an Arab majority. In conjunction with the White Paper, Britain imposed further restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine. However, Jewish immigration to Palestine never slowed. In fact, between 1920 and 1940, 250,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, the majority illegally.

The Jewish Insurgency in Mandatory Palestine

Before 1944, the Jewish underground in Palestine chose not to openly attack the British forces in Palestine as a way to help the war effort against Nazi Germany. However, as the Allies began to string together battlefield successes, the Jewish underground began to believe that the war would eventually end with Nazi Germany's defeat. This led to the February 1944 declaration of revolt against British rule, which in turn led to four years of bloody insurrectionist fighting and terrorism in Palestine. Ultimately, the British had no appetite to continue fighting this war in Palestine and gave Palestine to the nascent United Nations. This, in turn, led to the United Nations declaration of the creation of Jewish state on February 1, 1948, and the resulting civil war.

Publication History

This map was published c. 1944 in Tel Aviv.