Tel Aviv | It is Israel's second largest city

In 2018, the city had a population of 451,523, making it the second largest city in Israel after the capital Jerusalem. The Tel Aviv metropolitan area called Gush Dan covers a densely populated area with the neighboring cities of Ramat Gan, Giw'atajim, Cholon, Bat Jam and Bnei Brak, located up to 14 km from the Mediterranean coast, and is the largest metropolitan area in the country with a population of about 3.8 million. After the establishment of the State of Israel, most countries set up their embassies in Tel Aviv, as the status of Jerusalem was considered unclear according to the UN partition decisions.

After Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and declared "complete and united Jerusalem" as Israel's capital in the Jerusalem Law, the United Nations Security Council, in its Resolution 478, called on all states that had their embassies in Jerusalem to withdraw them. As a result, almost all diplomatic missions today are located in and around Tel Aviv. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the country's most important stock exchange, and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad also have their headquarters here.

According to popular belief, Tel Aviv was once built on sand dunes. The city center is located directly on the sea and partly only a few meters above sea level. In 2018, the science magazine Nature named Tel Aviv's White City, along with Rhodes, Istanbul and Dubrovnik or the Libyan site of Leptis Magna, for example, as one of 47 UNESCO World Heritage Sites on the Mediterranean threatened by flooding or erosion due to global warming. In the negative ranking of _{CO2 emitters,} Israel ranked 45th in the world in 2020 with 7.5 T/inhabitant.