\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFirst, the dominant political tendency in the Zionist trade-union federation, the Histadrut, rejected Arab-Jewish working-class solidarity. The Histadrut also owned a construction company and many enterprises related to the labor Zionist settlement movement. It sought to secure employment for Jewish workers in as many workplaces as possible and feared that if Palestinian Arab workers gained experience in trade-union organization, this might enhance their political capacity and nationalist consciousness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSecond, nationalist notables sought to convert the nascent Arab labor movement into their clients and steer its supporters away from class consciousness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nArab and Jewish workers organized jointly as early as the formation of the Union of Railway, Postal and Telegraph Workers in 1922. But the Histadrut leadership undermined its unity. In 1925, most of the Arab workers left and joined the Palestine Arab Workers Society (PAWS).<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, there were a number of notable joint actions by Arab and Jewish workers during the 1930s. In August 1931, a ten-day strike of truck and bus drivers who were protesting new taxes on gasoline and duties on motor transport immobilized traffic throughout the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Histadrut feared that if Palestinian Arab workers gained experience in trade-union organization, this might enhance their political capacity and nationalist consciousness.<\/q><\/aside>\nIn February 1935, hundreds of Arab and Jewish workers employed by the Iraq Petroleum Company in Haifa struck for higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. Their action inspired other workers in the Haifa area, the industrial center of Palestine, including the railway workers who were now represented by two unions, one entirely Arab and the other primarily Jewish. The Histadrut undermined Arab-Jewish solidarity by seeking to use this labor upsurge to get more Jews hired \u2014 the same issue that had broken the unity of Arab and Jewish railway workers a decade earlier.<\/p>\n
The Even Vesid stone quarry and limestone kiln was jointly owned by the Histadrut\u2019s construction contracting office and a wealthy Haifa Arab businessman, Tahar Qaraman. The owners paid Arab workers twelve piastres a day and Jewish workers twenty-five piastres for roughly the same work. The Arab workers struck in April 1935, demanding a daily wage of fifteen piastres, an eight-hour day, and the removal of a hated foreman. The Histadrut, in its role as employer, fought the strike, but was eventually embarrassed and raised the Arab workers\u2019 wages.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Even Vesid strike exemplifies the limits of Arab-Jewish working-class solidarity in Palestine. The company\u2019s profitability and the jobs of the better-paid Jewish workers depended on Arab workers receiving subpar wages, even though this contradicted the Histadrut policy of hiring only Jewish workers.<\/p>\n
By 1944, there were a hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs in the wage-labor force, their numbers swelled by the wartime needs of the British military. A substantial number of them joined or were under the influence of the Federation of Arab Trade Unions and Labor Societies, established by dissident Arab members of the Palestine Communist Party in 1942. By the end of World War II, Communists led about 20 percent of the organized Arab working class.<\/p>\nBy the end of World War II, Communists led about 20 percent of the organized Arab working class in Palestine.<\/q><\/aside>\nThreatened by the growth of radicalizing Arab trade unionism beyond its control, the Histadrut began competing with the largest Arab union federation, the PAWS, to represent both Arab and Jewish workers in the British military camps. On May 10, 1943, without consulting the PAWS leaders, the Histadrut called a strike of military-camp workers, seeking a cost-of-living allowance that regular government workers had previously received. PAWS leaders considered the Histadrut action a political challenge and called on Arab workers not to strike. Most did not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n \n \n \n Rival Movements<\/h2>\n \n This strike split the Palestine Communist Party into an all-Jewish faction, whose members had supported the strike, and Arab members, who had opposed it. The latter went on to establish the National Liberation League (NLL). The NLL promoted both the Palestinian Arab national struggle for independence from British imperialism and Arab trade unionism. In 1945, it established the Arab Workers Congress (AWC), which soon challenged the PAWS for preeminence among Arab workers.<\/p>\n
While national tensions between Arabs and Jews intensified after WWII, joint actions by Arab and Jewish workers reached a high point. This was in part because the NLL and the AWC distinguished between the Zionist movement and the Jewish community, especially workers, and advocated cooperation between Arab and Jewish workers on economic issues.<\/p>\n
In September 1945, the AWC and the Histadrut jointly led a seven-day strike of 1,300 Arab and Jewish workers employed at British military workshops on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The strikers demanded recognition of their joint committee, a cost-of-living allowance, and reinstatement of unjustly fired workers. They organized a joint march through the streets of Tel Aviv chanting in Hebrew and Arabic, \u201cLong live the unity between Arab and Jewish workers!\u201d \u2014 an extraordinary sight in Palestine\u2019s leading all-Jewish city. But the strike was only partially successful.<\/p>\n
During the fall of 1945, a joint committee of the Histadrut and the PAWS negotiated and won the demands of the 1,800 workers at Haifa\u2019s Consolidated Refineries, the largest industrial employer in Palestine. The Histadrut and the AWC went on a joint twelve-day strike of Socony Vacuum workers in April 1946. The PAWS, under pressure from supporters of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, refused to join the strike, which nonetheless achieved some gains for the workers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnother Arab-Jewish strike broke out at Consolidated Refineries in January 1947. It too was undermined by the PAWS leadership. In March of that year, 2,500 Arabs \u2014 the vast majority of the workforce \u2014 and Jews at the Iraq Petroleum Company struck for fourteen days and achieved a partial victory.<\/p>\nWhile national tensions between Arabs and Jews intensified after WWII, joint actions by Arab and Jewish workers reached a high point.<\/q><\/aside>\nThe largest postwar Arab-Jewish joint labor action was the April 1946 strike of blue- and white-collar postal, telegraph and telephone, and railway workers throughout the country \u2014 the first general strike of railway and postal workers in Palestine. They were soon joined by government civil servants and Public Works Department and port workers, with about twenty-three thousand workers taking part in total.<\/p>\n
The incapacitated British Mandate administration had to concede to many of the strikers\u2019 demands, including wage increases, a cost-of-living allowance, and pension improvements. Neither the Histadrut leaders nor conservative Palestinian nationalists welcomed this expression of Jewish-Arab solidarity.<\/p>\n\n \n \n
\n After the Nakba<\/h2>\n \n The Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the nakba, dispersed and weakened the Palestinian Arab working class. Former members of the National Liberation League living in the West Bank who established the Communist Party of Jordan provided the only organizational continuity.<\/p>\n
Most of the 156,000 Palestinians who remained in what became Israel after the war were ruled by a military government from 1949 to 1966. The Israeli authorities tightly regulated their movement and employment outside their villages. Under these circumstances, engaging in strikes was out of the question.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the Israeli government banned the Arab Workers Congress, which had barely survived the 1948 war, before allowing Palestinian Israelis to join the trade unions of the Histadrut in 1952. Many were nonetheless excluded from membership and denied employment on that basis. Not until 1965 were Palestinian Arab citizens able to vote in Histadrut elections as full members.<\/p>\nThousands of Palestinian teachers protest to demand a salary hike from the government in Ramallah, West Bank, on March 7, 2016. (Issam Rimawi \/ Anadolu Agency \/ Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIn the rest of what had been Mandate Palestine, Transjordan annexed the West Bank after the 1948 war to form the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Kingdom\u2019s rulers banned strikes. To this day, they are still heavily constrained by the 1996 Labor Law. Egypt administered the Gaza Strip from 1949 to 1967. Strikes were effectively illegal in Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser consolidated his power in 1954, and the same restriction applied to the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n\n \n \n
\n The Occupied Territories Since 1967<\/h2>\n \n After Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, tens of thousands of Palestinians from those territories began working in Israel and, paradoxically, in the construction of the Jewish settlements. Well over 100,000 Palestinians had permits to work in Israel by 1990 and tens of thousands more did so without permits \u2014 constituting perhaps as much as one-third of the Palestinian wage-labor force.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTheir conditions were very precarious. They were not permitted to join the Histadrut and were ineligible for most of its social benefits, although they paid an \u201corganization fee\u201d equal to 1 percent of their wages. This was supposedly to cover the cost of collective bargaining, in which they were never involved. Many were paid less than the legal minimum wage but striking to remedy this was out of the question.<\/p>\n