Summary
Palestinian nationalist group inside Israel, founded in 1958, whose name means family of the land in Arabic and which, in The Question of Palestine’s account, was the first Palestinian Arab political group to call for a separate Palestinian state.
Details
-
Usrat al-Ard means “family of the land” in Arabic; it was founded by a group of young Palestinian nationalists in 1958 and catalyzed the discontent of the native community inside Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.150 / printed p.129).
-
Its raison d’être was the Palestinian’s right to be in Palestine; it sought to develop an independent Palestinian Arab political presence within Israeli hegemony rather than emphasizing liberation (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.150 / printed p.129).
-
By the early sixties, though it had always sought to work legally, it had fallen victim to laws forbidding publication of its newspapers, running of its presses, or its registration as a legal political party; Said calls its major achievement negative — it demonstrated the impossibility of equality for non-Jews in Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.150-151 / printed p.129-130).
-
Al-Ard was the first Palestinian Arab political group to call for a separate Palestinian state (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.151 / printed p.130).
-
In Ibrahim Abu-Lughod’s analysis as summarized by Said, Al-Ard was the inside-Israel form of the fifties politics of rejection (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.161 / printed p.140).
-
In Manna, al-‘Ard (The Land) movement was created by the nationalist activists of the failed Arab Front: the front’s non-communist leaders resigned in January 1959, and “this trial followed by the resignations was the first step towards the creation of the al-‘Ard (The Land) movement by those nationalist activists” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.295).
-
Elias Kusa was one of the prominent figures who helped establish al-‘Ard after the 1958 common front’s failure, and the efforts of Kusa’s select few laid its foundation and engaged a new generation of literary and political activists in the 1960s, among them the lawyer Sabri Jiryis, who became a nationalist activist in that movement (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.296-297).
-
Some of its activists — Habib Qahwaji and Mansur Kardush — had already signed the 27 December 1956 declaration at Kusa’s house exposing the government’s responsibility for the Kafr Kassim massacre (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.296).
Where sources disagree
- Said dates the founding to 1958 and attributes it to a group of young Palestinian nationalists; Manna gives no founding date but makes it the sequel to the Arab Front’s collapse (resignations in January 1959) and names the veteran independent Elias Kusa among its founders, with a new 1960s generation joining afterwards. Both accounts are kept as each source presents them.
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Palestine Liberation Organization, Self-determination, Nakba and Survival, Arab Front, Elias Kusa