Postcard from Acre: An Arab-Israeli city managing to keep the peace - for now

Despite the violence to the south, east and north, peaceful co-existence prevails here - but underneath the surface bubbles anger

Tourists walk through the old city of Acre as the sun beats down on the stone pavement. Willy Lowry / The National

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A young girl sits on a donkey and bobs through the worn streets of the old district of Acre while a boy not much older than her pulls the beast through crowds gathering to mark Eid Al Adha.

For a brief moment, laughter and joy filled the thick, humid air of one the world’s oldest cities as Arab Israelis descended on Acre for the Eid holiday.

Children scampered through the crowds as parents looked on lovingly but even though people filled the streets, locals said it was nothing compared to previous years.

“Any other year, my family would be barbecuing tonight,” one young resident told The National.

The muted celebration reflected the tense calm that has presided over the city ever since Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 240 on October 7.

That attack instigated Israel's nearly nine-month siege of Gaza, where it has killed more than 37,000 people and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Acre sits 35km south of the Israel-Lebanon border. While the city has a two-thirds Jewish majority, the old district is nearly entirely Arab.

The narrow, uneven alley ways that zig and zag through the walled city feel like a cross between Jerusalem's Old City and the coastal funk of Stone Town in Zanzibar.

Byzantine ruins blend with crusader fortresses and Ottoman grandeur.

Colourful murals are plastered on century-old buildings and decorations hang over the streets.

It is a place where people can trace their family lines back not centuries but millennia and all the history that has transpired here is palpable.

“It's really something very, very special,” said Uri Jeremias, the owner of a popular fish restaurant and the luxury Effendi Hotel. “You have a kind of meeting of so many cultures and people.”

For years, the city was seen as a positive example of co-existence between Jewish and Arab Israelis.

However, that fragile harmony was shattered in May 2021, when an angry mob torched Jewish-owned businesses in the old district after Israeli police raided Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and hostilities broke out in Gaza.

Mr Jeremias’s businesses were among the targets. He chalked up the attacks to “radicals” who were upset that Acre was “showing that we can live together”.

In the nearly nine months since the latest Israel-Gaza war commenced, the city has been quiet and free of the kind of violence that swept over it in 2021.

But Arab residents feel a deep unease and many are scared to speak out for fear of retaliation from the historically far-right Israeli government.

“It’s a complicated place and a complicated time and a very strange demographic situation,” said one long-time resident, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation from authorities.

The resident added that it was “not a safe environment for freedom of speech now”.

Led by far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, hardline elements of the Israeli government have pushed for clampdowns on dissent among Arab-Israeli and Palestinian populations by arresting dozens for social media posts and comments that are deemed to support Hamas.

Many victims of the clampdowns said their posts were simply highlighting the plight of ordinary Palestinians.

The muzzling of dissent has led to a quiet in the old district but that does not mean all is well.

“I think the people have a lot of anger,” said Zouheir Bahloul, an Arab-Israeli politician and a former member of the Knesset. “But they are not speaking about that outside.”

Acre’s economy, like much of the rest of the country's, is hurting. The city, which goes by Akko among Jews and Akka among Palestinians, relies on tourism, which evaporated on October 7.

“The Jewish people are not coming here to the old city,” Mr Bahloul told The National. “They are not coming. They are not buying.”

And so the old district has somewhat retreated into itself as war rages to the south in Gaza and the prospect of another front opening up to the north along the Lebanese border becomes increasingly likely.

Its mesmerising alleys and spectacular architecture are, at least temporarily, reserved for those who have called it home for generations.