English: 1930 Survey of Palestine map of Jaffa-Tel Aviv, with highlighting showing urban boundaries of Jaffa (green) and Tel Aviv (blue) within the Jaffa Municipality (red)

For context, see: Tamir Goren (2016): Tel Aviv and the question of separation from Jaffa 1921–1936, Middle Eastern Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2015.1125340

Page 1: “Once Tel Aviv had won municipal status (the so-called Tel Aviv Township) in 1921, it strove to amend the relevant legislation by rescission of the clauses that placed it under Jaffa municipality’s supervision. In the succeeding years, this question became increasingly to the fore, and demanded a speedy solution. Together with the Tel Aviv’s ambition of independence as a Hebrew city with its own autonomous Hebrew government, some members of the township’s council did not favour separation from the mother city Jaffa. In the mid-1920s, the view consoli- dated among the town councillors that Tel Aviv’s subjection to Jaffa municipality had to be annulled, and it must be granted its deserved status as an independent Hebrew city. “

Page 3: “Tel Aviv municipality strove for full municipal rights, for the status of a municipality with all its implications, in this way enjoying absolute independence. Yet it still wished to maintain its interests in Jaffa. Most obvious was the desire not to lose the Jewish influence in the Jaffa municipality, as well as reinforcing the clout of the Jews on the municipal council. In Tel Aviv’s view, Jaffa enjoyed important status not only locally. At that time it was second in importance in Palestine only to Jerusalem, and was followed by Haifa, Safed and Tiberias.”

Page 4: “…the Mandate government took a positive view of Tel Aviv’s desire for full municipal independence. But at that stage it refrained from making any changes at all in Tel Aviv’s municipal status. From the closing years of the 1920s, the authorities immersed themselves in the preparation of a new framework for the Municipalities Law, which was intended to replace the Ottoman law. So as long as the new law was incomplete, the authorities avoided any change in the municipal status of Tel Aviv. [Footnote: The new Municipalities Order was published in 1934. That year Tel Aviv gained full municipal independence, becoming a municipal corporation.]”


See also: M. Gorion (Wager), Introduction to the History of Local Government in Israel (Jerusalem: University of Tel Aviv, 1957), pp.184–5 [Hebrew].