Haifa

A provocative argument for a new way of seeing Israel, Zionism, and the two-state solution. Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel is an urgent wake-up call. The philosopher Omri Boehm argues that it is long past time to recognize that there will not be a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. After fifty years, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank constitutes annexation in all but name, even as the legitimate claims of the Arab population, soon to be a national majority, remain unaddressed. Meanwhile, daily life goes on under conditions rightly likened to apartheid. For liberals in Israel and America to continue to place their hopes in a two-state solution is a form of willful and culpable blindness, especially now that Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have begun to speak of ethnic cleansing. A catastrophe is in the making. But Haifa Republic also offers grounds for hope. Catastrophe can be averted, Boehm contends, by reconfiguring Israel as a single binational state in which Palestinians and Jews both possess human rights and equal citizenship. The original Zionists—Theodor Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and, early in his career, David Ben-Gurion—all advocated such a federation, and as prime minister, Menachem Begin successfully submitted a kindred plan to the Knesset. A binational federation offers a last chance for the two peoples who call Palestine home to live in peace and mutual respect and to have a truly democratic future in common.

Nili Gold, who was born in Haifa to German-speaking parents in 1948, the first year of Israeli statehood, here offers a remarkable homage to her native city during its heyday as an international port and cultural center. Spanning the 1920s and '30s, when Jews and Arabs lived together amicably and buildings were erected that reflected European, modernist, Jewish, and Arab architectural influences, through 1948, when most Arabs left, and into the '50s and '60s burgeoning of the young state of Israel, Gold anchors her personal and family history in five landmark clusters. All in the neighborhood of Hadar HaCarmel, these landmarks define Haifa as a whole. In exquisite detail, Gold describes Memorial Park and its environs, including the border between the largest Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in Haifa; the intersection of Herzl and Balfour Streets, whose highlight is the European/Middle Eastern Technion edifice; Talpiot Market, recalling Haifa as a lively commercial hub; Alliance High School and the Great Synagogue, the former dedicated to instilling a love of intellectual pursuits, while the synagogue was an arm of the dominant Israeli religious establishment; the Ge'ula Elementary School and neighboring buildings that played a historical role, among them, the Struck House, with its Arab-inspired architecture - all against the dramatic backdrop of the mountain, sea, and bay, and their reverberations in memory and literature. Illustrated with more than thirty-five photographs and six maps, Gold's astute observations of the changing landscape of her childhood and youth highlight literary works that portray deeply held feelings for Haifa, by such canonical Israeli writers as A. B. Yehoshua, Sami Michael, and Dahlia Ravikovitch.

This volume offers a history of Haifa during that crucial part of the nineteenth century when Europe's penetration of Palestine combined with Istanbul's centralization efforts to alter irrevocably the social fabric of the country and change its political destiny. After tracing the town's beginnings in the early eighteenth century, the author painstakingly reconstructs from the few sijill volumes that have survived vital aspects of Ottoman Haifa's society and administration. A fresh look at the town's demography is followed by an in-depth discussion of the way inter-communal relations developed after the 1864 Vilāyets Law had brought a restructuring of the sources of elite power. The author's findings on the social status of Haifa's Muslim women significantly add to the vibrant picture of economic activities we now know urban Muslim women in the Ottoman Empire were involved in.

This text looks at the process by which the Arab community of Haifa was transformed during a crucial period in the history of modern Palestine by British mandatory rule, the advent of Zionism and internal dynamics. The author considers the social and economic structure of Haifa before 1918 and examines the process of change which took place. She looks at the attempts by the Arab community to cope with increasingly unfavourable economic and political conditions, showing how the impotence of the leadership and hardship caused popular grievances and culminated in the revolt of 1936-1939 which had its breeding ground in Haifa.

A collection of stories by a Palestinian novelist, journalist, teacher, and activist, including the novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the film The Deceived. Other stories were written during the 1950s and 1960s, and offer a gritty look at the agonized world of Palestine and the adjoining Middle East. Includes an introduction on Kanafani's life and work. The author, a major spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was killed in a car-bomb explosion in 1972. Lacks a subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Under Ottoman rule, the city of Haifa, located at the southern point of the largest bay on the coast of what today is Israel, was transformed from a scarcely-inhabited fortress town to a major modern city. This book details the history of Haifa under the Ottomans during the period 1516-1918. Alex Carmel uses a variety of original sources to uncover the realities of life in Haifa under Ottoman rule and paints a vivid picture of the development of the city in this era. Carmel's work has become the benchmark of the historiography of Israel's third largest city and remains to this day, the best-known and most highly-regarded survey of Haifa under Ottoman rule. This, the first English edition of 'Ottoman Haifa', will be essential reading for all historians of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.

This book, based on 25 months of anthropological fieldwork, examines activists and activism in Palestinian nongovernmental organizations in Israel. It concentrates on the ways organizations enable certain processes of self-identification based on activists' constructions of modernity.