FACTBOX-Facts about Acre and Arabs in Israel

FACTBOX-Facts about Acre and Arabs in Israel: "FACTBOX-Facts about Acre and Arabs in Israel

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Oct 13, 2008 12:02 EST

Oct 13 (Reuters) - Here are brief facts about the city of Acre, whose image as a model of co-existence between Jews and Arabs in Israel has been shattered by five days of violence.

* Of 53,000 people living in Acre, the city's website says about 28 percent are Arabs. In Israel as a whole, 1.5 million out of 7.3 million citizens -- just over a fifth -- are Arabs. They share roots, and in most cases the Muslim faith, with 4 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and 2.8 million living abroad as refugees since the war of 1948 that created the state of Israel.

* A city has existed near the Mediterranean coastal site of modern-day Acre, located at the northern end of Haifa Bay, for the past 4,000 years. Its old, walled port area is inhabited mainly by Arabs, while Jews dominate in Acre's modern suburbs.

* The Crusaders captured the city from its Arab rulers in the 12th century, naming it Saint-Jean d'Acre and making it the capital of their Kingdom of Jerusalem and a main trading centre before it was all but destroyed by the Mamelukes in 1291.

* Restored in the 18th century by a local Ottoman strongman known as Ahmed Pasha 'the Butcher', whose bu"