Summary
Haifa attorney, one of the most prominent of the fewer than a dozen Arab lawyers practising in Haifa and the Galilee up to the mid-1950s, who appears in Manna as counsel for the expelled of al-Khisas and as the rebutter of Ben-Gurion’s account of the June 1952 ‘Ara shootings (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.203, 212, 223).
Details
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In Chapter 1, Kusa went to General Stockwell on 22 April 1948 and recorded that Haifa’s mayor’s circular urging people not to leave had no effect while the Haganah forced families to the port (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.62).
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With Hanna Naqqara, he volunteered for Shaykh ‘Atiya’s Supreme Court case over the 1949 expulsion of al-Khisas’s remaining inhabitants; the court accepted the expulsion was illegal, but the army cured the “technical” error with individual expulsion orders on 7 July 1952 and the court then rejected the plaintiffs, recommending the authorities find an arrangement allowing people “who cooperated with the Jews of the country for a long time, some of whom even fought on the side of Israel in its war of independence” to return (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.203-204).
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After the ‘Ara shootings of 23 June 1952, Kusa wrote to rebut Ben-Gurion’s explanation: in the ‘Ara case there were no “infiltrators, just citizens who came close to the border from the Israeli side so that they could see their relatives.” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.212).
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Chapter 6 gives him a full section, “a one-man institution” (1896–1971): of Lebanese origin, AUB-educated, he arrived in Jerusalem in December 1917 with Allenby’s forces, worked over ten years in the justice department, resigned in 1928 and practised in Haifa, remaining there after April 1948 and watching the state store and then sell Haifa refugees’ possessions to incoming Jews (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.235-236).
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A non-communist critic who held Maki’s monopoly on representing Arab grievances harmful, he wrote to ministers and the UN and published in Nir: “In theory, the Arabs in Israel have equal rights with the Jews, but in fact they are persecuted in almost all areas.” Intelligence services discussed a plan “to break his bones” (anonymous letter, 21 August, kept in the prime minister’s advisor’s file); his home was burgled, and his son Nicola immigrated to Canada (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.237-238).
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His own March 1957 passport application was ignored for seventy days with no justification given, though he had never left Haifa; Manna says prime minister’s office documents confirm his conjecture that this was because he was an Arab (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.239).
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Manna attributes the unsigned al-Rabita article opposing the 1954 Arab conscription attempt — “Conscription should be rejected because the time is not suitable for it.” — as likely Kusa’s (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.252).
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Chapter 7’s remainder and the Epilogue (part 8) make Kusa the book’s independent counterweight to both Maki and the regime: his reply to Sharett’s 28 July 1951 broadcast insisted the Declaration promised “full equality in civil rights”, that land, movement and work mattered more than electing MKs, and that the Mapai lists’ candidates “were not elected by Arabs or any Arab party”; his one agreement with Sharett was that the courts showed no discrimination by gender or religion (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.277).
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With Tahir al-Fahum he signed the November 1954 letter charging all eight Arab MKs with failure, attacked the communists for exploiting a joint rights-defence committee, and challenged the communist MKs “to mention one single Arab problem which they managed to solve in the interests of the Arabs”; his own listed achievements were the Absentees Law amendment, Arabic on official checks and receipts, and memoranda on the Nationality and Land Acquisition laws (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.279-280).
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The independent circle around him — Jabbur Jabbur, Mas’ad Qassis, Shaykh Tahir al-Tabari, later al-Fahum, Shukri al-Khazin and Hanna Shumar — tried in 1953 and spring 1955 (as the Arab-Israeli Bloc) to organise independently, against opposition from both the authorities and the communists, who branded them “the Deportation Party”; the bloc withdrew before the 1955 elections (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.278).
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On 27 December 1956 he hosted the meeting at his Haifa house whose declaration exposed the government’s responsibility for the Kafr Kassim massacre, and on 11 January 1957 he wrote to fifty-six leading Arab figures urging a political organisation; intelligence tried to silence him through Bishop Hakim (the note signed “Carmel” to Uri Lubrani’s office) (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.296).
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He joined the Arab Front in July 1958, predicted its collapse, and withdrew, saying it had become “a pliable instrument in the hands of the communists”; he then helped establish al-‘Ard and in 1960 published two booklets attacking the Ben-Gurion government and its collaborators, Hakim most notable (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295-297).