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Fureidis
or Freidis [pop.: 10000] is an Arab local council in
the Haifa District. Founded in 1880, it received local
council status in 1952. Its name is probably derived
from the Arabic (firdawis), meaning little Garden of
Eden, which itself is borrowed from the Persian
paradise.

Fureidis and Jisr al-Zarqa are the only survivors of
many pre-1948 Palestinian villages along the
Mediterranean shore of what is now Israel, all other
sea-shore villages having been depopulated and
destroyed in the course of the 1948 war. Fureidis
residents are known as Arab citizens of Israel on good
terms with the State since the beginning;
specifically, they were on good terms with neighboring
Jewish communities whose inhabitants intervened to to
spare this village the fate of its neighbors. In
recent years, inhabitants of Fureidis complained of
discriminatory attitudes by state authorities and of
low living standards and crime problems in the village.


[from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fureidis]