Aref al-Aref
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Aref al-Aref (Arabic: عارف العارف, transliteration: ‘Aref al-‘Aref) (1891-1973) was a Palestinian journalist, author and politician. He was born in Jerusalem in 1891. He studied in Istanbul and was conscripted into the Ottoman army in World War I. He was captured and spent three years in a prisoner of war camp in Siberia, from where he escaped after the Russian Revolution and went back to Palestine.
He edited the first nationalist newspaper published in Palestine after World War I, Southern Syria Suriyya al Janubiyya, published in Jerusalem from 1919. Aref al-Aref and the paper advocated a policy of militant but non-violent opposition to Zionism and a mixture of Pan-Syrianist, Pan-Arabist and Palestinian nationalist politics. Aref al-Aref was arrested by British authorities following riots in 1920. He escaped with fellow-accused Haj Amin al-Husseini to Syria. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in absentia on charges of fomenting the riots. Suriyya al-Janubbiyya was closed down by the British in 1920. He returned to Palestine in 1929. He became a civil servant under the British mandate from 1933 to 1948. After the partition of Palestine in 1948 he served as a ministerial officer in the Jordanian government. He was appointed mayor of Jerusalem (in practice East Jerusalem) 1950-1955 and in 1963 was appointed director of Rockefeller Musem in Jerusalem.
His published work includes: Bedouin Love, Law and Legend, History of Beersheba and Its Tribes, History of Gaza, Al-Nakba wa al-Firdaous al-Mafqoud (Nakba and the Lost Paradise), and History of Jerusalem .
