Success stories of Palestinian achievers from all over the world

Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim

Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim

Sector : Business, Businessmen

Personal Info

  • Country of residence: Palestine
  • Gender: Male
  • Born in: 1889
  • Age: 128
  • Curriculum vitae :

Information

Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim "born in1889"  was a Palestinian Arab banker and a leader of the Independence Party of Palestine (al-Istiqlal).

He was one of the most influential Arab leaders of Haifa in the first half of the 20th century and played a leading role in both the 1936–39 Arab revolt and the 1948 Battle of Haifa. 

Al-Haj Ibrahim was born in Haifa in 1889 (though some sources say he was born in 1891) while Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire to a middle-class mercantile family, al-Haj Ibrahim.The al-Haj Ibrahim clan immigrated to Palestine from western North Africa and had a military past.

They gained a reputation in trade and commerce and held considerable influence in Haifa.Rashid was mostly self-educated, but he enrolled in Haifa's government-run secondary school and the Alliance Israelite School. He learned the Turkish language in addition to Arabic and initially worked in a public debt department, heading the city's trade office in 1913.

Leadership in Haifa and career in commerce

Al-Haj Ibrahim would later occupy a post as an official on the Haifa zone of the Hejaz Railway. He gradually became the head of his entire clan and gained considerable influence in the city; a common phrase that evolved in the area was "One cannot talk of Haifa without mentioning Rashid's name." 

After World War I, when the British wrested control of Palestine from the Ottomans and established the British Mandate in 1922, al-Haj Ibrahim worked both in commerce and journalism in Haifa. He led the city's Islamic Society, a charitable religious organization, in 1927, and the local Young Men's Muslim Association (YMMA). In order to compete with Jewish labor groups, by August 1928, al-Haj Ibrahim was charged with registering Arab laborers and tradesmen to work for employers in government-run building projects, particularly the port expansion scheme in Haifa. 

On August 23, 1930, Arab nationalist organizations met in Nablus—which was holding a general strike protesting what Arabs perceived as pro-Zionist British policy in Palestine—and elected a committee to help arm the Arab villages near Jewish settlements. Al-Haj Ibrahim was tasked to collect funds to purchase weapons. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council, Haj Amin al-Husseini, requested that al-Haj Ibrahim help persuade Arab youth groups to pray at the Western Wall in order to secure the site as an Islamic holy place, but al-Haj Ibrahim preferred to focus on condemningItalian atrocities in Libya and the British Mandate decision to draft Zionist youth into the army. He also promoted the "Southern Syria" orientation for Palestine entailing that Palestine was the southern province of Syria. This differed with al-Husayni's Palestinian nationalist tendencies In 1931, he established the Haifa branch of the Arab Bank. The salary he earned from managing the bank was supplemented slightly by the income generated from agricultural land he owned west of the city.

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