British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 941

CHAPTER XXII.

refusing to provide the services. There were indeed instances of Jews refusing to obtain water from Jaffa and turning to Tel Aviv instead.

147. '!'he Partition Commission of 1937, in considering the complicated question of a boundary between the two towns of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, proposed that it should consist of a road, which for administrative convenience should be as straight as possible, with a high iron railing down the middle. It was further proposed that the whole of the Florentin quarter and part of the Shapiro quarter should he transferred to Tel Aviv*.

148. In view of the continued agitation from the Jewish inhabitants of Jaffa and their refusal to pay rates, it was decided to examine the possibility of a solution by the use of section 63 of the Municipal Corporations Ordinance, 1934, which provides, inter alia, that "where the High Commissioner is satisfied that the inhabitants within any district included within a municipal area so desire, he may declare such district to be an urban district". This solution would have given the inhabitants of the Jewish quarters a considerable degree of autonomy. It was also suggested that, since some 2,300 Jewish school-children from Jaffa were attending school in Tel Aviv, it was reasonable that educational rates should be paid by the Jewish quarters to Tel Aviv. Although this interim solution appeared a practical solution of Jewish grievances, it was rejected by Mr. Shertok, on behalf of the Jewish Agency, on the grounds that it was applicable only to the Florentin quarter in the first instance. Mr. Shertok also claimed that it did not redress the Jewish grievance that their position in the Jaffa Municipality was "fundamentally anomalous and detrimental to their most vital interests". Mr. Shertok saw "no redress for this grievance save through separation from Jaffa".

149. In December, 1938, the mayor of Tel Aviv requested the High Commissioner to appoint a Commission to enquire into the question of the alteration of boundaries between the two towns. In reply the mayor was informed that the High Commissioner did not consider that the time was opportune for the appointment of a Commission, although Government concurred "in the view that not only will the problem shortly have to be solved, but that a Commission will have to be appointed to consider it''. As a preliminary, the Town Planning Adviser was charged with the duty of ascertaining certain facts and figures. The results of his enquiry are given in paragraph 143 above.
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* Vide Report of the Partition Commission, Chapter V, paragraphs 75-84.

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