'Ali al-Batal

Summary

The Arab boilermaker foreman brought into contact with the Jewish railway union by Ibrahim al-Asmar in 1923, who attended the railway union’s fifth congress as an observer, was elected to the joint union’s central committee in January 1925, and then became a leader of the Palestine Arab Workers Society (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 1440, 1446, 1570).

Al-Batal’s willingness to associate with Jewish unionists and advocate unionism despite management reprimands and threats signalled to rank-and-file Arab workers that involvement with the union was relatively safe (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 1440).
He and Ibrahim al-Asmar attended the Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers’ fifth congress (September 1923) as the first Arab observers, representing a much larger number of Haifa Arab workers in close contact with the union although only five Arabs had joined its Haifa branch (line 1446).
At the end of the January 1925 council meeting he was one of seven Arabs formally elected to the union’s central committee (line 1532).
In the leadership of the Palestinian Arab Workers’ Society formed in 1925, al-Batal was among those drawn from the group that had long negotiated with the Jewish unionists and had briefly been members of the joint union’s central committee (line 1570).
In Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Chapter 4: al-Batal and ‘Id Salim Haymur greeted the Jewish-led union’s sixth congress in summer 1927 on behalf of the Palestine Arab Workers Society, al-Batal telling the congress he had joined the Arab union “in order to find an appropriate form for joint organization of all the workers” (lines 1872-1874).

tags
aliases	Ali al-Batal