Summary
The quarry at Majdal Yaba (Migdal Tzedek) where the Histadrut’s campaign to impose Hebrew Labour was thwarted by Arab workers’ resistance in 1934 and April 1936, and finally succeeded at the end of 1936 with British backing — all the Arab workers fired, some 400 jobs lost, resistance broken by police and arrests (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, lines 2961-2964).
Details
- The success was only temporary: during the Second World War Jewish workers left for better jobs elsewhere and by the war’s end the quarry workforce was again at least partially Arab, prompting yet another effort to impose Hebrew labor in 1947 (lines 2961-2964).
- An Arab observer quoted by Lockman linked the October 14, 1937 derailment of a train near Ras-el-Ain Station to villages whose people “had had personal experience of what Zionists mean by the ‘conquest of labor’” (line 2962; Chapter 6 note 7, citing Mansur, Arab Worker, 31).
- In Mansour’s account the arrest of 97 Arab workers at the Majdal Yaba quarries at the end of the disturbances is a closing example of the revolt period’s labour repression — recorded on 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine from The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate.
- Chapter 8 note 23 records the sequel: when the Arab workers at Majdal Yaba went on strike in the late winter of 1947, their Jewish coworkers supported them in defiance of Histadrut directives that the strikers be replaced with Jews; al-Ittihad of March 9, 1947 commented that “this is the Histadrut which claims at the WFTU congress that it strives for understanding between Arabs and Jews concerning their day-to-day demands” (Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, line 4183).
Related pages
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, Histadrut, Hebrew Labour, Conquest of Labour, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine