British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 765

CHAPTER XVII.

Society, although without diminishing its influence. Workers were encouraged not to break away from the Palestine Arab Society, and in fact many who were already inclined to enroll in the Federation were told to join the other body.

64. The Federation's organizing activities were confined to Haifa and the surrounding industrial zone. The influence of The Federation, however, was much more widespread and the officials of the newer Palestine Arab Workers Society branches in Jerusalem, Jaffa and the south of Palestine sympathised with The line of policy of the Federation. A newspaper, Al Ittihad, to some extent an organ of the Federation, was widely distributed and read in Palestine Arab Workers Society branches outside Haifa.

65. The rift came at the Nablus conference of 5th August, 1G15, when exception was taken by the southern branches of the Palestine Arab Workers Society to the method of selection of the delegates to attend the World Trade Union Conference, eventually held in Paris in September. Arab labour had already been represented at the preliminary World Trade Union Conference held in London in the previous February. The Palestine Arab Workers Society were represented by a delegate and observer and the Federation by an observer only. At the Nablus conference an attempt by the "Haifa Centre" of the Palestine Arab Workers Society sought to make The delegate in question once again the leading representative at the Paris Conference and they were successful. The larger southern branches forthwith seceded from The Society.

66. The next move was taken at a conference held in Jaffa on 19th August, 1945. It was attended by representatives of the seceding Palestine Arab Workers' Society branches, the Federation of Arab Trades Unions and Labour Societies, and a number of other independent groups of workers some of whom had not been previously organized. The majority of organized Arab workers were represented at the conference. An Executive Committee of the Arab Workers Congress, comprising six members of some standing in the unions, was elected. The tasks given to the Executive Committee were :

(a) to draft a constitution for the Arab Workers Congress;

(b) to convene a constituent assembly of the Congress after a defined period of time; and

(r) to act provisionally as the directing body of the new majority movement.

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