Adib al-Disuqi

Summary

Former Arab Workers’ Society member in Jaffa-area sports activities, secretly hired by the Histadrut in 1943 as its local Palestine Labor League organiser, whose inclusion in talks with the Palestine Arab Workers Society sabotaged cooperation (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3385-3387, 3437).

Aware of the difficulties of securing a foothold in Jaffa, the Histadrut secretly hired al-Disuqi, who had been a member of the defunct Arab Workers’ Society and was now involved in Jaffa-area sports activities; he opened a sports club to make contacts with local workers, with Eliyahu Agassi helping from his years of contacts (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3385).
By summer 1943 al-Disuqi and Agassi had signed up over one hundred Arab sanitation workers, were openly negotiating for Arab and Jewish sanitation workers by July, and in August called a four-day strike that won higher wages; by September 1943 the Jaffa PLL branch claimed some 200 members, most of them municipal employees (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3387).
The Histadrut’s insistence on including PLL members, notably al-Disuqi — then engaged in raiding the PAWS’s membership, at a salary of £P18 a month as PLL organiser in Jaffa — in post-camp-strike talks was seen by PAWS leaders as a deliberate provocation and proof of the Histadrut’s bad faith (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 3437).

tags
aliases