History:

Early history

A small port city, Tell Abu Hawam, existed in the Haifa region in the Late Bronze Age (14th century BCE).[8] The 6th century BCE Greek geographer Scylax told of a city "between the bay and the Promontory of Zeus" (i.e., the Carmel) which may be a reference to Haifa.[8] By Hellenistic times the city had moved to a new site south of what is now Bat Galim because the port's harbour had become blocked with sand.[8] About the 3rd century CE, the city is first mentioned in Talmudic literature, as a small fishing village and the home of Rabbi Avdimos and other Jewish scholars.[8][14][15] A Greek-speaking population living along the coast at this time was engaged in commerce.

Haifa was located near the town of Shikmona, a center for making the traditional Tekhelet dye used in the garments of the high priests in the Temple. The archaeological site of Shikmona is southwest of Bat Galim.Mount Carmel and the Kishon River are also mentioned in the Bible.A grotto on the top of Mount Carmel is known as the "Cave of Elijah", traditionally linked to the Prophet Elijah and his apprentice, Elisha.[18] In Arabic, the highest peak of the Carmel range is called the Muhraka, or "place of burning," harking back to the burnt offerings and sacrifices there in Canaanite and early Israelite times

Early Haifa is believed to have occupied the area which extends from the present-day Rambam Hospital to the Jewish Cemetery on Yafo Street.The inhabitants engaged in fishing and agriculture.

Byzantine, Arab and Crusader rule

Under Byzantine rule, Haifa continued to flourish, although never assumed major importance.In the 7th century, the city was conquered by the Persians. Later the Rashidun Caliphate was established over the Middle East. This brought about developments in the city; in the 9th century under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, Haifa established trading relations with Egyptian ports and the city featured several shipyards. With the Caliphate in control of government and civil administration, Arabs and Jews engaged in trade and maritime commerce, and Haifa again prospered by the 11th century. Glass production and dye-making from marine snails were the city's most lucrative industries.

Prosperity ended in 1100, when Haifa was besieged and blockaded by the Crusaders and then conquered after a fierce battle with its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants. Under the Crusaders, Haifa was reduced to a small fishing and agricultural village. It was a part of the Principality of Galilee within the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Following their victory at the Battle of Hattin, Saladin's Ayyubid army captured Haifa in mid-July 1187. The Crusaders under Richard the Lionheart retook Haifa in 1191. The Carmelites established a church on Mount Carmel in the 12th century. Under Muslim rule, the building was turned into a mosque, later becoming a hospital. In the 19th century, it was restored as a Carmelite monastery over a cave associated with Elijah, the prophet.

Mamluk, Ayyubid, Ottoman and Egyptian rule

The city's Crusader fortress was destroyed in 1187 by Saladin. In 1265, the army of Baibars the Mamluk captured Haifa, destroying its fortifications, which had been rebuilt by King Louis of France, as well as the majority of the city's homes to prevent the European Crusaders from returning. For much of their rule, the city was desolate in the Mamluk period between the 13th and 16th centuries. Information from this period is scarce.However, during Mamluk rule in the 14th century, al-Idrisi wrote that Haifa served as the port for Tiberias and featured a "fine harbor for the anchorage of galleys and other vessels.

Modern history

In 1761 Dhaher al-Omar, a Bedouin ruler of Acre and Galilee, demolished the city and rebuilt Haifa in a new location, fortifying it with a wall.This event is marked as the beginning of the town's modern era.

After al-Omar's death in 1775, the town remained under Ottoman rule until 1918, with the exception of two brief periods. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Haifa during his unsuccessful campaign to conquer Palestine and Syria, but soon had to withdraw. Between 1831 and 1840, the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali governed Haifa, after his son Ibrahim Pasha had wrested its control from the Ottomans.

19th and early 20th century
German Colony in the 19th century

After the Egyptian occupation ended, Haifa grew in population and importance as Acre suffered a decline. In 1854 the population was 2,012 inhabitants; 2,070 Arabs (1,200 Muslims, 870 Christians) and 32 Jews. The arrival of the German Templers in 1868, who settled in what is now known as the German Colony of Haifa, was a turning point in Haifa's development. The Templers built and operated a steam-based power station, opened factories and inaugurated carriage service to Acre, Nazareth and Tiberias, playing a key role in modernizing the city.

The first European Jews arrived at the end of the 19th century from Romania. The Central Jewish Colonisation Society in Romania purchased over 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) near Haifa. As the Jewish settlers had been city dwellers, they hired the former fellahin tenants to instruct them in agriculture. In 1909 Haifa became central to the Bahá'í Faith, when the remains of their prophet, the Báb, were moved to Acre and a shrine built on Mount Carmel by `Abdu'l-Bahá. Haifa is thus an important site of worship, pilgrimage and administration for members of the faith. The Bahá'í World Centre (comprising the Shrine of the Báb, terraced gardens and administrative buildings) are all on Mount Carmel's northern slope. Haifa is also important to the Bahá'ís because the founder of the religion, Bahá'u'lláh, had been imprisoned there by the Ottomans. The Bahá'í shrine and gardens are one of Haifa's most visited tourist attractions, and in 2008 were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

British Mandate

At the beginning of the 20th century, Haifa emerged as an industrial port city and growing population center. The Hejaz railway and the Technion were built at this time. Haifa District was then home to approximately 20,000 inhabitants, 96 percent of them Arabs (82 percent Muslim and 14 percent Christian), and four percent Jews. Over the next few decades the number of Jews increased steadily, due to immigration, especially from Europe. By 1945 the population had shifted to 53 percent Arab (33 percent Muslim, 20 percent Christian) and 47 percent Jewish. In 1947 about 70,910 Arabs (41,000 Muslims, 29,910 Christians) and 74,230 Jews were living there.[40] The Christian community were mostly Greek-Melkite Catholics.

1948 Palestine War

The 1947 UN Partition Plan designated Haifa as part of the proposed Jewish state. When the Arab leadership rejected the UN's plan, Haifa did not escape the violence that spread throughout the country. On December 30, 1947, members of the Irgun, a Jewish underground militia, threw bombs into a crowd of Palestinian Arabs outside the gates of the Consolidated Refineries in Haifa, killing six and injuring 42. In response Arab employees of the company killed 39 Jewish employees in what became known as the Haifa Oil Refinery massacre. The Jewish Haganah militia retaliated with a raid on the Arab village of Balad al-Shaykh, where many of the Arab refinery workers lived, in what became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre.[42] Control of Haifa was critical in the ensuing 1948 Palestine War, since it was the major industrial and oil refinery port in Palestine.
Arab residents leave Haifa as Jewish forces move in, April 21-22, 1948.

British forces in Haifa redeployed on April 21, 1948, withdrawing from most of the city while still maintaining control over the port facilities. Two days later the city was invaded by Jewish forces in Operation Bi'ur Hametz, by the Carmeli Brigade of the Haganah, commanded by Moshe Carmel. The invasion led to a massive displacement of Haifa's Arab population. According to The Economist at the time, only 5,000-6,000 of the city's 62,000 Arabs remained there on October 2, 1948.

Benny Morris and other scholars have said Haifa's Arabs left due to of a combination of Zionist threats and encouragement to do so by Arab leaders, but mainly because of the shelling of Arab villages and neighborhoods. Ilan Pappe writes that the shelling culminated in an attack on a Palestinian crowd in the old marketplace using three-inch mortars on April 22, 1948. Shabtai Levy, the Mayor of the city, and some other Jewish leaders urged Arabs not to leave, whereas Jewish loudspeakers could be heard in the city ordering Arab residents to leave "before it's too late."

Some contemporaneous sources emphasized the Arab leadership as a motivating factor in the refugees' flight. Time Magazine wrote on May 3, 1948: "The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city ... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa." It was later established that no specific Arab order to evacuate had been given.

Establishment of the State of Israel

After the state of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, Haifa became the gateway for Jewish immigration into Israel. Thousands of immigrants were resettled in Arab houses vacated when Jewish forces invaded. New neighborhoods, among them Kiryat Hayim, Ramot Remez, Ramat Shaul, Kiryat Sprinzak, and Kiryat Eliezer, were built to accommodate them. Bnei Zion Hospital (formerly Rothschild Hospital) and the Central Synagogue in Hadar Hacarmel date from this period. In 1953, a master plan was created for transportation and the future architectural layout.
Sail Tower, an example of modern architecture in Haifa

In 1959, a group of Mizrahi Jews, mostly Moroccans, rioted in Wadi Salib. The rebels, members of a social activist group known as the Black Panthers and living in “absentee” properties formerly belonging to Haifa Arabs, claimed the state was discriminating against them. Their demand for “bread and work” was directed at the state institutions and what they viewed as an Ashkenazi elite in the Labor Party and the Histadrut.

Tel Aviv gained in status, while Haifa suffered a decline in the role as regional capital. The opening of Ashdod as a port exacerbated this. Tourism shrank when the Israeli Ministry of Tourism placed emphasis on developing Tiberias as a tourist centre.

Nevertheless, by the early 1970s, Haifa's population had reached 200,000. Mass immigration from the former Soviet Union boosted the population by 35,000.

Many of Wadi Salib's historic Ottoman buildings have now been demolished, and in the 1990s a major section of the Old City was razed to make way for the municipal center.

In 2006, Haifa was hit by 93 Hezbollah rockets during the conflict with Lebanon, killing eleven civilians and leading to half of the city's population fleeing at the end of the first week of the war. The oil refinery complex was also struck by a rocket.