History
The Hassan Bek Mosque was built in 1916, by Jaffa's Turkish-Arab governor of the same name. At the time, Arab Jaffa and the recently-founded Jewish-Tel-Aviv were both competitively expanding northwards and seeking to block each other; the mosque was part of Manshiye, Jaffa's northernmost neighbourhood which spread northwards along the Mediterranean seashore.
Some years after its construction, Tel-Aviv's Allenby Street was extended to the seashore some distance north of the mosque, blocking further Arab construction.
According to Yosef Nahmias, former member of the Irgun unit which conquered the area in April 1948, he and his men planted demolition charges in the Hassan Bek Mosque immediately upon its capture and prepared to blow it up, but this was strictly vetoed by his commander Menachem Begin (future Israeli PM ).
Also at various later times there were plans and proposals made to demolish the mosque, but they were never carried out. However, the rest of the former Palestinian houses surrounding Hassan Bek, whose original inhabitants now live in Gaza Strip refugee camps, were all destroyed, some in the immediate aftermath of 1948 and some in the Tel Aviv city renovation plan of the 1960s.
The place of the razed Arab housing was taken by high-rise office buildings and a park, as well as the sea-shore Dolphinarium (used first for dolphin performances, stopped due to protests by animal rights groups, and than transformed into a nightclub - which was to become tragically famous in 2001). The Hassan Bek Mosque - spared due to the state and municipal authorities hesitating to be seen as desecrating a Muslim holy place - remained a single remnant of the area's pre-1948 past.
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