The Haifa Declaration

Over 50 years after the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, a group of Palestinian intellectuals, academics, and activists from different fields and political viewpoints has undertaken an effort to draft a consensual statement of a collective vision that Palestinian citizens in Israel articulate about themselves. The statement, known as "The Haifa Declaration" is a project begun in 2002 under the auspices of Mada al-Carmel – Arab Center for Applied Social Research, in Haifa. The project sought to create a forum for Palestinian Arab citizens from as broad a social and political base as possible, a forum in which we could go beyond the boundaries of power politics and the limitations imposed on political parties' discourse to freely discuss our vision of the past, present, and future – specifically, our collective future and status in our homeland, the major challenges facing our society, our relationship with our people, nation, and the state of Israel.