Tel Aviv Promenade

This guide to the Tel Aviv Promenade opens with a claim about what lies beneath the joggers and falafel stands: the vanished seafront quarter of Al-Manshiyya, home to roughly twelve thousand Arab residents and a thousand Jewish neighbors until the spring of 1948. It follows the block-by-block battle for the neighborhood between Irgun fighters and British forces, the only direct clash between the two sides in the whole conflict, and what became of the residents afterward. For years afterward, the empty houses stood half wrecked, doors banging in the sea wind, before city planners tried and mostly failed to build a new downtown on the site.