Summary
The broad front of Maki leaders and independent nationalist activists announced at meetings in Acre and Nazareth on 6 July 1958, after the 1 May 1958 Nazareth confrontations — in Manna’s account a symbolic political event marking a new political generation of the Remainers, whose non-communist leaders resigned within six months, in a first step toward al-‘Ard (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295-296).
Details
- After the 1 May 1958 confrontations in Nazareth, discussions began in July 1958 for the formation of an Arab front to include Maki’s leaders and nationalist activists headed by Yani Yani, head of the Kufr Yasif local council; the military government and other agencies acted quickly to prevent it, considering it tantamount to an act of rebellion and an unprecedented challenge, and placed dozens of activists under administrative detention and others under house arrest (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295).
- Despite the measures, meetings were held in ‘Akka and Nazareth on 6 July 1958 and the establishment of the Arab Front was announced (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295).
- Many of its leading figures were independent activists who had previously tried to set up a political organisation as an alternative to the Communist Party and Mapai’s Arab slates; Elias Kusa joined the front with the communists and was among the first to predict it would not last, withdrawing on the claim that “it had become a pliable instrument in the hands of the communists” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295).
- In January 1959, less than six months after its founding and shortly after it had opened branches in many Arab cities and villages, its non-communist leaders resigned, including Tahir al-Fahum, Yani Yani, Jabbur Jabbur and Mansur Kardush; the trial and resignations were the first step towards the creation of al-‘Ard by those nationalist activists (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295).
- Manna frames the front’s establishment as a symbolic political event in the remainers’ history and, in Karl Mannheim’s terminology, the harbinger of a new political generation, arising from the 1956 war, the Kafr Kassim massacre’s solidarity, and the rapprochement between communists and nationalist activists (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295-296).
- The next time the communists organised a broad Arab front and challenged the authorities’ policy, Manna writes, was on “Land Day” in 1976 (see Day of the Land) (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.297).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, Maki, Elias Kusa, Usrat al-Ard, Nazareth, Remainers