This is Tel Aviv in 1909. As you can see, it's just sand and seashells. So how did it become a city? During the 1880s, under Ottoman rule, Jews started founding new neighborhoods outside of Jaffa due to overcrowding. The first was Neve Tzedek, founded in 1887 by Mizrahi Jews on lands purchased by Aharon Chelouche, an Algerian Jew who moved to the Land of Israel in 1840 and made a fortune trading in gold and silver. He purchased the land from local Arabs. In 1890 Neve Shalom was founded by Zerah Barnett, a wealthy Lithuanian Jew, who purchased the land with his own money in the same way. Other neighborhoods have similar stories. Notice that they were all founded under Muslim rule on land bought from Muslims. So when did these neighborhoods become Tel Aviv? In 1906, 60 Jewish families purchased plots near Jaffa and registered them under the name of Jacobus Kann, a Dutch citizen. The funding came from the Jewish families themselves, who were aided by a loan from the Jewish National Fund. The town was originally named Ahuzat Bayit ("homestead") but was renamed Tel Aviv in 1910. In 1917, the Ottoman authorities expelled the residents of Jaffa and Tel Aviv as a wartime measure. The Jews returned to the area after the British defeated the Ottomans. After the war, Tel Aviv became an attraction to immigrants because it offered the comforts they were used to in Europe: electric light, water, cinema, opera, theatre, restaurants... all the good things you couldn't get in a kibbutz. It received township in 1921, under British rule, and was granted the status of an independent municipality in 1934, after its population swelled due to riots against Jews in Jaffa, forcing many to flee to Tel Aviv, as well as Jews fleeing the rise of Nazism in Europe. No stolen homes, no stolen land, no stolen money. Just hardworking people turning desert into prosperity with their own wealth and effort.