e, 53,930 of whom were Muslim and 16,800 Christian, making up the Arab population, and 30,820 Jewish, was designated as part of the Arab state. The Arabs, however, rejected the plan. Between 1947 and 1948, tensions grew on the border between Tel Aviv and Jaffa, with Arab snipers who were firing at Jews from the minaret of the Hassan Bek Mosque. The Haganah and Irgun Jewish forces retaliated with a siege on Jaffa. From April 1948, the Arab residents began to leave. When Jaffa was conquered by Israeli forces on 14 May, few remained.
After Israeli independence
When Israel declared Independence on 14 May 1948, the population of Tel Aviv was over 200,000. Tel Aviv was the temporary government centre of the State of Israel until the government moved to Jerusalem in December 1949. Due to the international dispute over the status of Jerusalem, most foreign embassies remained in or near Tel Aviv. 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, all national embassies are in Tel Aviv or environs. 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 ex-Arab neighbourhood of Abu Kabir, the ex-Arab village of Salama and some of its agricultural land, and the Jewish 'Hatikva' slum. On 25 February 1949, the abandoned Arab village of al-Shaykh Muwannis was also annexed to Tel Aviv. On 18 May 1949, Manshiya and part of Jaffa's central zone were
