Musa Alami

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Musa Alami (1897-1984) was a prominent Palestinian nationalist and politician.

Born in Musrara district of Jerusalem, he was taught at the school of the American Colony and at the French Ecole des Freres in Jaffa. During World War I Alami worked at the censorship office in Damascus. Later he studied law at Cambridge University and was admitted to the Inner Temple and graduated with honors degree.

Upon his return to Jerusalem, Musa Alami worked for the legal department of the government of the British Mandate of Palestine and eventually became the private secretary of the High Commissioner General Arthur Grenfell Wauchope. Alami was brother-in law of Jamal al-Hussayni and supported Mufti Mohammad Amin al-Husayni.

In 1934, Alami participated in talks with the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. When Ben-Gurion suggested that the Zionists could provide significant help developing the region, Alami replied that he would prefer waiting one hundred years and leaving the land backward, as long as the Palestinians could do the job themselves.^[1]

Alami was ousted from his government position as legal adviser by the British authorities and went into exile in Beirut, and later in Baghdad. He played an important role in negotiations with the British government in London in 1938-1939. He was the major contributor to the White Paper of 1939, which severely limited Jewish immigration.

In his autobiography, Alami described the political scene in Jerusalem after the establishment of Israel in 1948: "The new [Palestinian] leaders were a set of young men of some education, all of them in the traumatic condition induced by the consciousness of having suffered a resounding defeat at the hand of an enemy whom they had heartily despised."^[2]

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Alami retired to Jericho.

Concerning the status of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, he stated: "It is shameful that the Arab governments should prevent the Arab refugees from working in their countries and shut the doors in their faces and imprison them in camps." ^[3]

Alami raised funds for building villages for the refugees and founded an agricultural farm whose produce was exported. The farm was destroyed in the course of the Arab riots in Jericho in 1958 against the British, but with help from the World Bank and the Ford Foundation, Alami managed to rebuild it. The site is still commonly known as "the Musa Alami farm".

Musa Alami died in 1984, and his funeral took place in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Israel Defence Force checkpoint/crossing on the eastern exit of Jericho (through which Palestinians travelling to Jordan via the Allenby Bridge pass through) is named Musa Alami (after the adjacent farm).

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Furlonge, Geoffrey W., Palestine is My Country: The Story of Musa Alami (NYC, Praeger Publishers, 1969)
• Laqueur, Walter: Dying for Jerusalem: The Past, Present and Future of the Holiest City (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006) ISBN 1-4022-0632-1. pp.157-172
• Alami, Musa. The Lesson of Palestine, Middle East Journal, Vol. 3, No. 4, October 1949, pp. 373-405.