Summary
The young Jerusalem lawyer from a prominent Nashashibi-aligned family who led the joint Arab-Jewish drivers’ mobilisations of 1931 and then sought Zionist funding for a “Palestine Arab Workers’ Party” (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 2279-2300).
Details
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At the end of 1930 Arab owners and drivers asked al-Dajani to present their demands for lower gasoline prices, taxes and fees and relief from fines to the petroleum companies and the government; when talks failed he worked closely with Shraga Gorokhovsky (later Goren) of the Histadrut’s Cooperatives Center, and on June 29, 1931 announced an Arab-Jewish strike committee and a countrywide motor transport strike from July 1 (lines 2279-2285).
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He chaired the Vehicle Owners’ and Drivers’ Association’s parity executive committee, with Gorokhovsky as vice-chair; he hesitated over a renewed strike while Gorokhovsky, backed by the Histadrut, strongly opposed one (lines 2285-2290).
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Attacked in the Arab press, led by Filastin, for cooperating with Jews, he replied “somewhat disingenuously” that there was no joint association but an alliance of two entirely separate organisations; the attacks did not greatly weaken him and he remained the drivers’ leader through the nine-day November 1931 strike (lines 2286-2294).
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After the strike he secretly sought Jewish Agency Political Department funding to establish a “Palestine Arab Workers’ Party”, envisioned as a cross between a political party and a trade union federation; Moshe Shertok and other officials were interested and Histadrut officials drew up a charter, but nothing came of the plans (lines 2294-2296).
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He remained head of the Arab Car Owners’ and Drivers’ Association and became one of the leaders, and a secretary, of the National Defence Party founded in 1934 by the Nashashibis (lines 2296-2300; Chapter 5 note 28).
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Chapter 5 note 28 records that members of the al-Dajani family, and perhaps Hasan Sidqi himself, had sought Zionist support before: the Zionists secretly funded a “National Muslim Society” in 1922-23, one of whose leaders was Shukri al-Dajani, and in 1923 Hasan Sidqi al-Dajani was among the initiators, with the Nashashibis, of the anti-Husayni “Palestinian Arab Nationalist Party”, which also secretly sought Zionist funding (lines 2664-2672).
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In Chapter 6, al-Dajani’s drivers’ union paralyzed Arab motor transport during the 1936 general strike (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 2943-2946).
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Lockman records that al-Dajani, a leader of the Nashashibi faction, was assassinated in Ramallah in October 1938, gunned down as internecine killings multiplied in the revolt’s suppression (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 3070-3074).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Histadrut, Filastin, National Defence Party, Fakhri al-Nashashibi, Raghib al-Nashashibi