Al-Manshiyya

Al-Manshiyya grew up in the late 1870s, when Jaffa burst its old walls — demolished in 1879 — and spread north along the seafront toward the new Jewish neighborhoods. The quarter stood on the border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, north of the harbor, and from the start it was mixed: mainly Muslim Arabs, but also Jews, who knew the area as Neve Shalom and built houses, a synagogue, and a ritual bath there; at one point the quarter had four mukhtars, three Arabs and a Jew. A 1944 British police report estimated its population at some 12,000 Arabs and 1,000 Jews. Its best-known landmark was the Ottoman-era Hassan Bek Mosque, standing at the edge of the shore road.

In the last weeks of the Mandate, al-Manshiyya became the front line of the battle for Jaffa. The quarter was broken by Irgun bombardments during the civil war, and in late April 1948, during Operation Hametz, the Irgun captured it along with the villages around Jaffa. The British, then withdrawing through Arab-held territory and fearing retaliation against their troops, deployed 4,500 men to Jaffa and shelled the Irgun positions in al-Manshiyya with artillery and tanks; when British armor pushed into the quarter, the Irgun knocked out a tank with a bazooka and dropped dynamite into others, and the British withdrew — the only direct battle ever fought between British forces and the Irgun. Al-Manshiyya fell on 28 April 1948 after scores of Palestinians were killed or wounded, and the quarter was severed from Jaffa; its remaining Arab residents fled, many by sea.

What was left of the quarter’s houses was left to decay and then demolished between the late 1960s and early 1980s, to make way for a central business district that was only ever partly built. Some forty hectares are now office buildings, parking lots, and public gardens, and the seaside strip became Charles Clore Park. Three buildings survive from the old quarter: the Hassan Bek Mosque, restored and returned to prayer; the shell of the house known as Beit Gidi, which holds part of the Irgun Museum; and a derelict house on Mered Street.

Sources

• Al-Manshiyya — Zochrot
• Manshiya — Wikipedia
• Al-Manshiyya: Bordering and Spatializations of Difference on the Vanishing Palestinian Coastline — Urban Transcripts Journal