Acre and Haifa: Sisters on two sides of a single bay - Johnny Mansour*

In the realm of culture, for instance, the city’s Ahmadiyya School, located adjacent to the Al-Jazzar Mosque, provided religious and other forms of education to students from the surrounding region and beyond. [...] In April and May 1948, Acre absorbed thousands of refugees from Haifa who arrived aboard liners and crawlers from the Port of Haifa, fleeing the fire of the Haganah military organization, which executed the plan to expel the Arab population of Haifa. [...] Additionally, the arrival of the Hejaz railway line from the Levant connected the Syrian interior to the coast, thereby providing thousands of workers with a livelihood. [...] In the face of the urban development of Arab Haifa, the Zionist project was active in establishing settlements on the peaks of Mount Carmel overlooking the city. [...] Thus, Haifa was divided into two communities that existed in two separate sections of the city: the Palestinian community spread naturally along the coast and over the low-lying slopes of Mount Carmel situated off the port and the sea, alongside a Jewish community that lived in settler neighborhoods on the top of the Carmel.