Israel
After Israel declared Independence on 14 May 1948, Tel Aviv was the temporary government center of the State of Israel. The city was repeatedly bombed by Egyptian warplanes and shelled by Egyptian warships during the Israeli War of Independence, killing around 150 people. The most significant attack was the bombing of the central bus station, in which 42 people were killed. On 3 June 1948, the Israeli Air Force scored its first aerial victory over Tel Aviv when Israeli fighter pilot Modi Alon shot down two Egyptian bombers during a raid. The city was also the scene of fighting between the Israel Defense Forces and Irgun during the Altalena Affair, in which the IDF stopped an Irgun attempt to import arms for its own use.
In December 1949, the Israeli government relocated to Jerusalem. Due to the international dispute over the status of Jerusalem, most embassies remained in or near Tel Aviv. The boundaries of Tel Aviv and Jaffa became a matter of contention between the Tel Aviv municipality and the Israeli government in 1948. The former wished to incorporate only the northern Jewish suburbs of Jaffa, while the latter wanted a more complete unification. The issue also had international sensitivity, since the main part of Jaffa was in the Arab portion of the United Nations Partition Plan, whereas Tel Aviv was not, and no armistice agreements had yet been signed. On 10 December 1948, the government announced the annexation to Tel Aviv of Jaffa's Jewish suburbs, the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Kabir, the Arab village of Salama and some of its agricultural land, and the Jewish Hatikva Quarter. On 25 February 1949, the former Arab village of al-Shaykh Muwannis was also incorporated into Tel Aviv. On 18 May 1949, Manshiya and part of Jaffa's central zone were added, for the first time including land that had been in the Arab portion of the UN partition plan. The government voted on the unification of Tel Aviv and Jaffa on 4 October 1949, but the decision was not implemented until 24 April 1950 due to the opposition of Tel Aviv mayor Israel Rokach. The name of the unified city was Tel Aviv until 19 August 1950, when it was renamed Tel Aviv-Yafo in order to preserve the historical name Jaffa. Tel Aviv thus grew to 42 km2 (16.2 sq mi). In 1949, a memorial to the 60 founders of Tel Aviv was constructed.
In the 1960s, some of the older buildings were demolished, making way for the country's first high-rises. The historic Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium was controversially demolished, to make way for the Shalom Meir Tower, which was completed in 1965, and remained Israel's tallest building until 1999. Tel Aviv's population peaked in the early 1960s at 390,000, representing 16 percent of the country's total. By the early 1970s, the population of Tel Aviv began to decline, followed by a period of urban decay. By 1981, Tel Aviv had entered not just natural population decline, but an absolute population decline as well. In the late 1980s the city had an aging population of 317,000. Construction activity had moved away from the inner ring of Tel Aviv, and had moved to its outer perimeter and adjoining cities. A mass out-migration of residents from Tel Aviv, to adjoining cities like Petah Tikva and Rehovot, where better housing conditions were available, was underway by the beginning of the 1970s, and only accelerated by the Yom Kippur War. Cramped housing conditions and high property prices pushed families out of Tel Aviv and deterred young people from moving in. From the beginning of 1970s, the common image of Tel Aviv became that of a decaying city, as Tel Aviv's population fell 20%.
In the 1970s, the apparent sense of Tel Aviv's urban decline became a theme in the work of novelists such as Yaakov Shabtai, in works describing the city such as Sof Davar (The End of Things) and Zikhron Devarim (The Memory of Things). A symptomatic article of 1980 asked "Is Tel Aviv Dying?" and portrayed what it saw as the city's existential problems: "Residents leaving the city, businesses penetrating into residential areas, economic and social gaps, deteriorating neighbourhoods, contaminated air – Is the First Hebrew City destined for a slow death? Will it become a ghost town?". However, others saw this as a transitional period. In the late 1970s, mayor Shlomo Lahat partnered with an urban planning firm to make changes to the city's urban fabric. Offices which had emerged throughout the city's neighborhoods, turning them into corporate spaces, were removed. Tel Aviv's main business center became the area along the Ayalon Highway, enabling neighborhoods in the rest of the city to be revitalized. By the late 1980s, attitudes to the city's future had become markedly more optimistic. It had also become a center of nightlife and discotheques for Israelis who lived in the suburbs and adjoining cities. By 1989, Tel Aviv had acquired the nickname "Nonstop City", as a reflection of the growing recognition of its nightlife and 24/7 culture, and "Nonstop City" had to some extent replaced the former moniker of "First Hebrew City". The largest project built in this era was the Dizengoff Center, Israel's first shopping mall, which was completed in 1983. Other notable projects included the construction of Marganit Tower in 1987, the opening of the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater in 1989, and the Tel Aviv Cinematheque (opened in 1973 and located to the current building in 1989).
In the early 1980s, 13 embassies in Jerusalem moved to Tel Aviv as part of the UN's measures responding to Israel's 1980 Jerusalem Law. Today, most national embassies are located in Tel Aviv or environs. In the 1990s, the decline in Tel Aviv's population began to be reversed and stabilized, at first temporarily due to a wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tel Aviv absorbed 42,000 immigrants from the FSU, many educated in scientific, technological, medical and mathematical fields. In this period, the number of engineers in the city doubled. Tel Aviv soon began to emerge as a global high-tech center. The construction of many skyscrapers and high-tech office buildings followed. In 1993, Tel Aviv was categorized as a world city. However, the city's municipality struggled to cope with an influx of new immigrants. Tel Aviv's tax base had been shrinking for many years, as a result of its preceding long term population decline, and this meant there was little money available at the time to invest in the city's deteriorating infrastructure and housing. In 1998, Tel Aviv was on the "verge of bankruptcy". Economic difficulties would then be compounded by a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the city from the mid-1990s, to the end of the Second Intifada, as well as the dot-com bubble, which affected the city's rapidly growing hi-tech sector. On 4 November 1995, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated at a rally in Tel Aviv in support of the Oslo peace accord. The outdoor plaza where this occurred, formerly known as Kikar Malchei Yisrael, was renamed Rabin Square.
In the Gulf War in 1991, Tel Aviv was attacked by Scud missiles from Iraq. Iraq hoped to provoke an Israeli military response, which could have destroyed the US–Arab alliance. The United States pressured Israel not to retaliate, and after Israel acquiesced, the US and Netherlands rushed Patriot missiles to defend against the attacks, but they proved largely ineffective. Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities continued to be hit by Scuds throughout the war, and every city in the Tel Aviv area except for Bnei Brak was hit. A total of 74 Israelis died as a result of the Iraqi attacks, mostly from suffocation and heart attacks, while approximately 230 Israelis were injured. Extensive property damage was also caused, and some 4,000 Israelis were left homeless. It was feared that Iraq would fire missiles filled with nerve agents or sarin. As a result, the Israeli government issued gas masks to its citizens. When the first Iraqi missiles hit Israel, some people injected themselves with an antidote for nerve gas. The inhabitants of the southeastern suburb of Hatikva erected an angel-monument as a sign of their gratitude that "it was through a great miracle, that many people were preserved from being killed by a direct hit of a Scud rocket."
Since the First Intifada, Tel Aviv has suffered from Palestinian political violence. The first suicide attack in Tel Aviv occurred on 19 October 1994, on the Line 5 bus, when a bomber killed 22 civilians and injured 50 as part of a Hamas suicide campaign. On 6 March 1996, another Hamas suicide bomber killed 13 people (12 civilians and 1 soldier), many of them children, in the Dizengoff Center suicide bombing. Three women were killed by a Hamas terrorist in the Café Apropo bombing on 27 March 1997.
The demographic profile of the city changed in the 2000s, as it began to attract a higher proportion of young residents. By 2012, 28 percent of the city's population was aged between 20 and 34 years old. Between 2007 and 2012, the city's population growth averaged 6.29 percent. As a result of its population recovery and industrial transition, the city's finances were transformed, and by 2012 it was running a budget surplus and maintained a credit rating of AAA+. In the 2000s and early 2010s, Tel Aviv received tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, primarily from Sudan and Eritrea, changing the demographic profile of areas of the city. In 2009, Tel Aviv celebrated its official centennial. In addition to city- and country-wide celebrations, digital collections of historical materials were assembled. These include the History section of the official Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Year website; the Ahuzat Bayit collection, which focuses on the founding families of Tel Aviv, and includes photographs and biographies; and Stanford University's Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv Collection, documenting the history of the city. Today, the city is regarded as a strong candidate for global city status. Over the past 60 years, Tel Aviv had developed into a secular, liberal-minded center with a vibrant nightlife and café culture.
One of the deadliest attacks occurred on 1 June 2001, during the Second Intifada, when a suicide bomber exploded at the entrance to the Dolphinarium discothèque, killing 21, mostly teenagers, and injuring 132. Another Hamas suicide bomber killed six civilians and injured 70 in the Allenby Street bus bombing. Twenty-three civilians were killed and over 100 injured in the Tel Aviv central bus station massacre. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. In the Mike's Place suicide bombing, an attack on a bar by a British Muslim suicide bomber resulted in the deaths of three civilians and wounded over 50. Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed joint responsibility. An Islamic Jihad bomber killed five and wounded over 50 on 25 February 2005 Stage Club bombing. The most recent suicide attack in the city occurred on 17 April 2006, when 11 people were killed and at least 70 wounded in a suicide bombing near the old central bus station. Another attack took place on 29 August 2011 in which a Palestinian attacker stole an Israeli taxi cab and rammed it into a police checkpoint guarding the popular Haoman 17 nightclub in Tel Aviv which was filled with 2,000 Israeli teenagers. After crashing, the assailant went on a stabbing spree, injuring eight people. Due to an Israel Border Police roadblock at the entrance and immediate response of the Border Police team during the subsequent stabbings, a much larger and fatal mass-casualty incident was avoided.
On 21 November 2012, during Operation Pillar of Defense, the Tel Aviv area was targeted by rockets, and air raid sirens were sounded in the city for the first time since the Gulf War. All of the rockets either missed populated areas or were shot down by an Iron Dome rocket defense battery stationed near the city. During the operation, a bomb blast on a bus wounded at least 28 civilians, three seriously. This was described as a terrorist attack by Israel, Russia, and the United States and was condemned by the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom, France and Russia, whilst Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri declared that the organisation "blesses" the attack. More than 300 rockets were fired towards the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area in the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.
New laws were introduced to protect Modernist buildings, and efforts to preserve them were aided by UNESCO recognition of Tel Aviv's White City as a world heritage site in 2003. In the early 2000s, Tel Aviv municipality focused on attracting more young residents to the city. It made significant investment in major boulevards, to create attractive pedestrian corridors. Former industrial areas like the city's previously derelict Northern Tel Aviv Port and the Jaffa railway station, were upgraded and transformed into leisure areas. A process of gentrification began in some of the poor neighborhoods of southern Tel Aviv and many older buildings began to be renovated.
