Haifa is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of 282,832 in 2021. The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area in Israel. It is home to the Baháʼí Faith's Baháʼí World Centre, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a destination for Baháʼí pilgrimage.
A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.
The Battle of Haifa, called by the Jewish forces Operation Bi'ur Hametz, was a Haganah operation carried out on 21–22 April 1948 and a major event in the final stages of the civil war in Palestine, leading up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The objective of the operation was the capture of the Arab neighborhoods of Haifa. By mid-May 1948 only 4,000 from the pre-conflict population estimate of 65,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in the city.
The Arab citizens of Israel are the largest ethnic minority in the country. They comprise a hybrid community of Israeli citizens with a heritage of Palestinian citizenship, mixed religions, bilingual in Arabic and Hebrew, and with varying social identities. Self-identification as Palestinian citizens of Israel has sharpened in recent years, alongside distinct identities including Galilee and Negev Bedouin, the Druze people, and Arab Christians and Arab Muslims who do not identify as Palestinians. In Arabic, commonly used terms to refer to Israel's Arab population include 48-Arab and 48-Palestinian. Since the Nakba, the Palestinians that have remained within Israel's 1948 borders have been colloquially known as "48-Arabs". In Israel itself, Arab citizens are commonly referred to as Israeli-Arabs or simply as Arabs; international media often uses the term Arab-Israeli to distinguish Arab citizens of Israel from the Palestinian Arabs residing in the Palestinian territories.
Izz ad-Din Abd al-Qadar ibn Mustafa ibn Yusuf ibn Muhammad al-Qassam was a Syrian Muslim preacher, and a leader in the Arab nationalist struggles against British and French Mandatory rule in the Levant, and a militant opponent of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s.
Isratin or Isratine, also known as the bi-national state, is a proposed unitary, federal or confederate Israeli-Palestinian state encompassing the present territory of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Depending on various points of view, such a scenario is presented as a desirable one-state solution to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, or as a calamity in which Israel would ostensibly lose its character as a Jewish state and the Palestinians would fail to achieve their national independence within a two-state solution. Increasingly, Isratin is being discussed not as an intentional political solution – desired or undesired – but as the probable, inevitable outcome of the continuous growth of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the seemingly irrevocable entrenchment of the Israeli occupation there since 1967.
Emile Shukri Habibi was a Palestinian-Israeli writer of Arabic literature and a politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the communist parties Maki and Rakah.
Abnaa el-Balad is a secular Arab nationalist movement made up of Palestinians, most of whom are Arab citizens of Israel. The stated goals of the movement are: the return of all Palestinian refugees, an end to Israeli's occupation of territories and the establishment of a democratic, secular Palestinian state.
Samīħ al-Qāsim al Kaissy was a Palestinian poet with Israeli citizenship whose work is well known throughout the Arab world. He was born in Transjordan and later lived in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Before the Six-Day War in 1967 he was mainly influenced by Arab nationalism; after the war he joined the Israeli Communist Party.
In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland of the Jewish people.
The intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine was the civil, political and armed struggle between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Yishuv during the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The conflict shifted from sectarian clashes in the 1920s and early 1930s to an armed Arab rebellion against British rule in 1936, armed Jewish revolt primarily against the British in mid-1940s and finally open war in November 1947 between Arabs and Jews.
Operation Ben-Ami was one of the last operations launched by the Haganah before the end of the British Mandate. The first phase of this operation was the capture of Acre. A week later four villages east and north of Acre were captured.
In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Mandatory Palestine's Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias during the 1948 Palestine war, following the Partition Plan for Palestine. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names. These activities were not necessarily limited to the year 1948.
The Hamas Covenant or Hamas Charter, formally known in English as the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, was originally issued on 18 August 1988 and outlines the founding identity, stand, and aims of Hamas. A new charter was issued by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal on 1 May 2017 in Doha.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence and in Arabic as a central component of the Nakba. It is the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict. During the war, the British terminated the Mandate and withdrew, ending a period of rule which had begun in 1917, during the First World War. Beforehand, the area had been part of the Ottoman Empire. In May 1948, the State of Israel was established by the Jewish Yishuv, its creation having been declared on the last day of the Mandate. During the war, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced.
Nadim N. Rouhana is Professor of International Negotiation and Conflict Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Founder and General Director of Mada al-Carmel, Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, which undertakes theoretical and applied social research and policy analysis to broaden knowledge and critical thinking about the Palestinians in Israel, equal citizenship, and democracy.
Johnny Mansour is a Palestinian academic, author and historian at the Department of History Studies at the Academic College in Beit Berl. He specializes in the contemporary history of the Middle East and Palestine, the Palestinian issue, and the history of Haifa.
The Nakba was the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, and the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe both the events of 1948, as well as the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and persecution and displacement of Palestinians throughout the region.
Return to Haifa is a novella written by Palestinian author and journalist, Ghassan Kanafani, which mainly depicts Israel occupation over the Palestinian lands during the 1948 war in Haifa when Britain was in control of the land.
