Tel Aviv - City of Israel

Tel Aviv-Yafo , usually Tel Aviv, is the second-largest city in Israel. The city is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, with a land area of 51.8 square kilometres . It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan.] The city is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality, headed by Ron Huldai.

Tel Aviv is Israel's economic hub and its richest city, home to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and many corporate offices and research and development centers.Its beaches, bars, cafés, upscale shopping and cosmopolitan lifestyle have made it a popular tourist destination,and given way to its reputation as a "Mediterranean city that never sleeps." It is the country's cultural capital and a major performing arts center. According to 2005 estimates, the Tel Aviv urban area is the Middle East's second biggest city economy, and is 52nd in the world's list of cities by GDP.

Jaffa is an ancient port and has changed hands many times in the course of history. A series of archeological excavations, between 1955 and 1974, revealed traces of towers and gates from the Middle Bronze Age.Subsequent excavations, from 1997 onwards, helped date earlier discoveries.They also exposed sections of a packed-sandstone glacis and a "massive brick wall", dating from the Late Bronze Age as well as a temple "attributed to the Sea Peoples" and dwellings from the Iron Age. Remnants of buildings from the Persian, Hellenistic and Pharaonic periods were also discovered.

During the 1880s, Ashkenazi immigration to Jaffa increased with the onset of the First Aliyah. The new arrivals were motivated more by Zionism than religion and came to farm the land and engage in productive labor.In keeping with their pioneer ideology, some chose to settle in the sand dunes north of Jaffa. The beginning of modern-day Tel Aviv is marked by the construction of Neve Tzedek, a neighborhood built by Ashkenazi settlers between 1887 and 1896.

Tel Aviv's White City, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, emerged in the 1930s. Many of the German Jewish architects trained at the Bauhaus, the Modernist school of architecture closed by the Nazis in 1933, fled Germany. Some came to Palestine and adapted the architectural outlook of the Bauhaus as well as other similar schools, to local conditions, creating what is claimed to be the largest concentration of buildings in the International Style in the world.


Tel Aviv has suffered from violence by Palestinian militant groups since the post-First Intifada period. The first suicide attack in Tel Aviv occurred on October 19, 1994, on the Line 5 bus, when a bomber killed himself and 21 civilians as part of a Hamas suicide campaign. The most deadly attack occurred on June 1, 2001, during the Second Intifada, when a suicide bomb exploded inside a nightclub called the Dolphi Disco, and 21 were killed and more than 100 were injured. The most recent attack in the city occurred on April 17, 2006, when nine people were killed and at least 40 wounded in a suicide bombing near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv has a Mediterranean climate with hot summers, pleasant springs and autumns, and cool, wet winters . Humidity tends to be high year-round due to the city's proximity to the sea.

Despite its image as a secular city, Tel Aviv has about a hundred synagogues, including historic buildings such as the Great Synagogue, established in the 1930s. In recent years, a center for secular Jewish Studies and a "secular yeshiva" have opened in the city. Tensions between religious and secular Jews before the gay pride parade ended in vandalization of a synagogue.

Tel Aviv is more accepting of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender-transsexuals than any other major city in the region and has a well established LGBT community. The city hosts an annual pride parade that attracts tens of thousands, and early 2008 saw the city hosting Israel's first sex festival. In December 2008, Tel Aviv began putting together a team of gay and lesbian athletes for the 2009 World Outgames in Copenhagen. The event is planned to feature a "Tel Aviv-style beach experience" to celebrate the city's upcoming centennial.

Tel Aviv is home to many schools, colleges, and universities. Sixty-four percent of students in the city are entitled to matriculation, more than 5 percent higher than the national average.Four thousand children are in first grade at schools in the city, and population growth is expected to raise this number to 6,000 by 2012. As a result, 20 additional kindergarten classes will open in 2008–09 in the city, while additional classes will be added at schools in north Tel Aviv. A new elementary school is planned north of Sde Dov as well as a new high school in north Tel Aviv.