Haifa

For the former independent nation, see Free State of Haifa. For the Hammish autonomous territory, see Hammish Haifa. For the Caputian state, see Caputian Haifa.

Haifa

Flag
Coat of Arms
Motto:	"Veritas nos elegit" (Truth Chose Us)
Capital	Abeis
Largest Cities	Keybir-Aviv, Lewisburg,
Official Languages	Common Tongue, Haifan, Pallisican
Demonym	Haifan
Government	The Government of the State of Haifa
Head of State	Díapaza Bréidle
Head of Government
Legislature	Strait of Haifa Investment Committee
Population	20,678,067(39.20 PSSC)

Etymology

There are two main hypothesis of how the name Haifa came about. One hypothesis is that the name relates to the Haifan (Hebrew) root, CHFA, which means “to cover, to hide”, perhaps because of Lake Morovia being "hidden" in the middle of the Keltian continent. Another interpretation links the name with the word CHOF, beach, or “beautiful beach.”

History

Haifa was founded over the course of several decades by serial migratory waves of Hammish citizens from the state of Anglia and Israat along the shores of Lake Morovia. During their migration, they came into contact with several indigenous groups to the area, which led to their mixing over several generations and creating a distinct Haifan culture. It became an independent state called the Free State of Haifa under the leadership of its first Prime Minister, Herman Wozhleweitz.

Free State of Haifa

Haifan tradition places Wozhleweitz, his successor George Perlman, and the first diamond strikes south of the city of Abeis in a period before the documented record begins; under Perlman, tradition holds, the proceeds of the mines built a banking and finance sector and turned an agricultural country toward commerce. The republic whose institutions are attested proclaimed itself at Abeis in 1602 AN under Ismael Todochev, and the Free State dates its founding from that proclamation.

Three streams of settlement met on Lake Morovia before the proclamation. The Israati-descended communities of the mainland were joined by refugees from Afrikaana, who settled the Northern Isles and the southern towns, bringing the Gorogoro religion and the DakaÏuru language, and by Babki families fleeing Eura, who populated the island of Jezeraah. The admission of the Afrikaanians was marked by the Festival of Union, kept thereafter as the anniversary of their reception.

Haifa had first sought association with the Commonwealth of Hamland, largely to gain access to the Hammish stock market, and declared itself a republic only after the Commonwealth failed to secure recognition of the wider claim that would have brought Haifa in with it. Todochev held that union with Hamland remained a matter of timing. Directives of the Foreign Office committed the republic to formal neutrality and to unconditional recognition of every Micran state, and within weeks of the proclamation Haifa concluded the Treaty of Abeis with the Empire of the Alexandrians, which bound each party to treat an attack on the other as an attack on itself, and a treaty of friendship with the Republic of North Antarctica.

At its fullest extent the republic comprised six regions. Haifa proper was administered from Abeis and took in Jezeraah, the Northern Isles and the mining city of Keybir-Aviv. The other five were Minab Azis in the south, the Wallis Islands settled under Erlo Sinders, the corporate district of the Fenkel Shipping Co., the principality of Walstadt that Todochev had purchased in 1602 AN, and, from 1608 AN, North Antarctica at New Livingston, which counted some nine million inhabitants against a hundred thousand in Haifa proper. By 1605 AN, when he was returned to office in the republic's first contested prime-ministerial election, Todochev held the premiership, the principality, the chief executive's office at the Fenkel Shipping Co., and command of the army.

Each region returned a governor, and the governors supplied the head of state. That office, under the constitution then in force, was the Governor-General, elected by Parliament from among the serving governors and acting as Speaker and as the republic's senior diplomat while the Prime Minister led the cabinet. Four constitutional texts were written in eighteen years, none of them settling the length of a prime-ministerial term. Todochev lost the premiership in 1609 AN; his successor, Fayiz Sarraj of the Social Democratic Party, resigned within weeks for want of his own ministers' confidence, and Sinders held the office on an interim basis thereafter.

The last general election, held in 1614 AN on a six-seat proportional count, gave the Haifan Democratic Party four seats against two for the Social Democrats, and Benjamin Meir was ratified as Prime Minister in 1615 AN. His premiership lasted a single session, and its principal act was the Treaty of St. Andre, concluded with Natopia in 1616 AN, which transferred Walstadt to the Natopian crown in exchange for the port city of Port St. Andre. Meir resigned both the premiership and his citizenship within the month, and no successor was chosen; the office stood vacant for the republic's remaining four years.

The Wallis Islands declared independence in 1617 AN on Sinders's signature alone, and were annexed by Passio-Corum thereafter. In 1620 AN what remained of the citizenry concluded the Agreement of Dissolution, which partitioned the remaining territory: Haifa proper passed to the Commonwealth of Hamland, North Antarctica to Passio-Corum, and Port St. Andre became the Most Serene Republic of St. Andre, named in the agreement as Haifa's successor state. The mutual-defense obligation of the Treaty of Abeis passed to St. Andre.

Haifa as part of Hamland

Haifa proper was organized as an autonomous territory of the Commonwealth of Hamland from 1620 AN, with Abeis as its administrative capital. To fund the transition the Commonwealth allocated the whole of its currency reserve, 16,762.85 obols, to Haifa for immediate investment.

Haifa's firms had been listed on the Ham50 throughout the Free State period, the republic had belonged to the SCUE, and its first treaty with the Commonwealth had been ratified in 1606 AN. Hammish administration disturbed neither the diamond fields south of Abeis nor the trade out of Keybir-Aviv, and Haifan banking continued to serve the Commonwealth as a whole. Haifan sporting bodies kept their separate international membership under Hammish rule, and the territory retained its own football and rugby competitions.

The Wallis-Haifan Diamond Company carried the stones out of Keybir-Aviv, keeping the Sinders family's commercial interest in Haifan ground after Sinders himself had gone to the Wallis Islands. The republic's administrative apparatus did not last as well: by 1625 AN members of the Commonwealth were proposing to renew Haifan institutions, on the reasoning that little of it was still running.

Hammish Civil War

Unrest reached Haifa as the Hammish government collapsed in 1644 AN. Disturbances in Israat and Neo Patrova were settled by mediation under the interim premiership of Donat Ravaillac. The Haifan unrest was not, and the Hammish military was sent to secure the territory. Its conduct there divided the National Provisional Authority, the interim government Ravaillac headed, and his ministers objected openly to the army's methods. Ravaillac was assassinated by a sniper at a military review in New Kirrie held to mark what the army called the pacification of Haifa.

The war ran on for nine years more, and Keybir-Aviv was among the cities where demonstrations were held against the military government of General Eliphas. It was Eliphas's own weapons program that reached Haifa next: the Alexandrian Flu, loosed in transit to the eastern front, spread through the territory between 1650 AN and 1652 AN, killing an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the eastern Commonwealth's population and eliminating the nascent Haifan Nationalist Army.

The National Salvation Front, an umbrella of groups based in eastern Hamland, had drawn its fighters from the rural districts of Anglia & Israat, the regions that furnished Haifa's original settlers. One of the groups under its umbrella, the Order of Rochefort, was based partly in the territory and funded through Passio-Corum. Refugees and demobilized fighters moved into the strait corridor, and Haifan nationalism took root among them. The war carried the Stripping Path outward into central and eastern Keltia.

The war was settled by the Geneva Peace Agreement, negotiated under Alexandrian mediation, and Hammish authority did not recover: in 1653 AN Haifa passed with the rest of the Commonwealth into the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia. The Order of Rochefort alone did not merge into the new kingdom's forces.

Haifa as part of Caputia

The state of Haifa was the third largest state in the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia by population. Abeis was the most populous city in Caputian Haifa and among the largest in Caputia, while Keybir-Aviv was second-most populous in the state. Other major cities included Lewisburg and Melusinia. Haifa under Caputian rule was nicknamed "The Free State" to signify its former status as an independent republic and as a reminder of the state's struggle during the Hammish Civil War.

Historically four major industries shaped the Haifan economy under Caputian rule: diamond mining, agriculture, banking and finance, fishing, and technology. With a growing base of industry, the state led in many industries, including agriculture, jewelry, computers and electronics, aerospace, and biomedical sciences.

Rise of Haifan nationalism

The period of Caputian rule in Haifa was defined by the rise of Haifan nationalism, a political movement that first began during the Hammish Civil War, which sought the re-establishment of an independent Haifan nation. The rise of Haifan nationalism was heavily and forcefully opposed by the government of Caputia, which correctly assessed that the political movement was a product of foreign interference campaigns spearheaded the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union. The heavy handed response of the Caputian government, which included policies that denied citizenship to any person who practiced the native religion of the Haifan people, that sought the deportation of the practitioners of the Haifan religion, and which disenfranchised Haifan voters who expressed support for independence, did little to quell the growth of Haifan nationalism. Rather, most Haifan nationalists found their resolve strengthened by such measures, which they regarded as pure manifestations of the corrupt and oppressive system of foreign governance from which they sought independence. When in 38.25 PSSC the government of Caputia announced that it would reject the outcome of a referendum in which Haifans voted in favor of independence, these Haifan nationalists - whose resolve had been strengthened by the heavy-handed policies enacted by the Caputian government - rose up in violent revolt. This rebellion set the stage for the Haifan civil war, which would occur in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the Caputian government, and the subsequent annexation of Haifa by the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union.

Bassarid annexation and civil war

The annexation of Haifa by the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union brought to the forefront of regional politics the rift which had developed between Haifan nationalists, who supported independence from Caputia and closer political ties to the Bassarid Empire, and Morovian Nationalists, who called for complete Haifan independence from all foreign influence. The tension between these two groups resulted in the outbreak of open conflict across Haifa, most notably in the cities of Tel-Amin and Lewisburg. The outbreak of fighting in these cities would mark the formal start of the Haifan Civil War, a conflict between Haifan nationalists supported by the New Zimian War League and Morovian nationalists supported by the Greater Morovian Independence Initiative, which would cause widespread devastation across a large portion of the Haifan Peninsula, and which would have consequences for the entire Keltian continent. The conflict between Haifan and Morovian nationalists would lay the groundwork for the emergence of other separatist movements in the region, most notably the Jezeri forces, who regarded themselves as the true heir to the legacy of the Free State of Haifa.

In the period following the conclusion of the Haifan Civil War, in which the nation's capital city of Abeis was placed under joint-administrative control, the Haifa was overwhelmed by the rapid growth of the illicit Noctic-Rabrev trade, which emerged from the Alperkin region of northwestern Lake Morovia. Despite the limited support of the New Zimian War League, which maintained long-term anti-trafficking operations in the region, the government of Haifa was largely unable to contain the growing use of the vampirism-inducing intoxicant within its borders.

Geography

Climate and Topography

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Demographics

Region Statistics

Note: Haifa is represented on the Port of Vines by the West Keltian Relief Fund .

Year	Population	Growth (Growth %)	Food Imports (/Person)	Fuel Imports (/Person)	Other Imports (/Person)	Immigration Modifier (%)	Seats in Regional Government	Seats in Houses of Corum
39.80 PSSC	21,077,778	-219,038 (-1.04%)	10,215,200 (.48)	65,346,358 (.3.1)	20,246,524 (.96)	.22	N/A	N/A
39.60 PSSC	21,295,817	439,706 (2.06%)	11,817,013 (.55)	70,551,319 (3.31)	24,110,756 (1.13)	.2	N/A	N/A
39.40 PSSC	20,856,111	178,044 (.85%)	10,717,847 (.51)	62,669,496 (3)	21,412,064 (1.02)	.22	N/A	N/A
39.20 PSSC	20,678,067	N/A (N/A%)	17,58,998 (.9)	102,893,543 (4.93)	37,509,515 (1.81)	.13	N/A	N/A