Abd al-Latif Salah

Abd al-Latif Salah was born in the city of Nablus to Muslih Salah and had a brother named Amin. Abd al-Latif married the daughter of Shaykh Omar Zuaiter, mayor of Nablus. His son, Walid Abd al-Latif Salah, was a lawyer who held several ministerial posts in Jordan in the 1950s as well as the post of President of the Bar Association; he served as a member in both the upper and lower houses of the Jordanian National Assembly.

Abd al-Latif Salah received his primary education in government schools in Nablus and completed his secondary education in government schools in Istanbul. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Law in Istanbul and graduated as a lawyer, with a specialization in criminal law. He worked in the secretariat of the Ottoman Council of State, the empire’s highest judicial institution, until the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution in July 1908. After that he went to work in the Registry Department of the Senate, the upper house of the Ottoman parliament. In addition to Arabic, he was fluent in Turkish and French.

In early 1919, Salah was chosen to be a member of the Nablus chapter of the Muslim-Christian Societies. In this capacity, he participated in the first Palestinian National Congress, initiated by the Muslim-Christian Societies and which was convened in Jerusalem from 27 January to 10 February 1919. The congress decided to send two memorandums to the members of the Paris Peace Conference that rejected the Balfour Declaration and demanded Palestine’s independence as an integral part of Syria. He also participated in the proceedings of the six subsequent Palestinian National Congresses that were convened in Palestine until 1928.

On 25 September 1919, Salah was tasked by Ali Rida al-Rikabi, the Syrian prime minister during the era of King Faisal, to establish the Faculty of Law in Damascus, and he was appointed as its dean for a short period. Salah then opened a law firm with offices in both Nablus and Jerusalem. He also taught law at the Law Classes in Jerusalem and wrote on legal matters.

In 1922, Salah was elected as a member of the Supreme Moslem Sharia Council for the district of Nablus, alongside Haj Mohammad Amin al-Husseini from the Jerusalem district, Said al-Shawwa from the Gaza district, Shaykh Mohammad Murad from the Haifa district, and Abdullah al-Dajani from the Jaffa district. Haj Amin was chosen to be head of the council. After he finished serving his four-year term, Salah devoted most of his time to practicing law, during which he became prominent as a highly successful lawyer. He became renowned for fighting cases of land ownership in which he defended Arabs’ right to their land and to resisting attempts by the Zionist movement to grab it.

In the beginning of April 1925, Salah founded the Palestinian People’s Party [Hizb al-Ahali al-Watani] in Nablus, a nationalist party among whose prominent leaders was Adel Zuaiter, son of Shaykh Omar Zuaiter, the (then) mayor of Nablus and Salah’s father-in-law. It is said that Shaykh Omar advised his son-in-law, then still a member of the Supreme Moslem Sharia Council, to work to ensure that his son Adel would succeed him as mayor of Nablus. The two founded this party to guarantee an electoral victory. The party’s objectives included promoting democratic principles among the Palestinian people; opposing authoritarianism, political tyranny, and the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual; developing the country’s economic and commercial conditions; promoting education; alleviating the burdens on the common Palestinian citizen, especially with taxation; and mobilizing efforts to combat the sale of land to Jews. On the political front, the party aimed to curb Jewish immigration to Palestine, to try to get the Balfour Declaration rescinded, and to ultimately end British Mandate rule over Palestine. However, this party was short-lived, and it became largely defunct by 1927.

In the summer of 1932, Salah made an extended trip to France, during which he visited several French cities, including Paris and its mosque. Upon his return, he related his impressions from that visit in an interview he gave to the newspaper Filastin on 12 October 1932.

On 25 February and 26 March 1933, Salah participated in two nationalist mass meetings held in Nablus, where it was decided to adopt a policy of “non-cooperation” with the Mandate authorities. However, he was one of those who advocated a gradual implementation of this policy, beginning at first with “a boycott of engaging in ceremonial politesse with the government, such that no functions are to be held for its senior officials and no invitations are to be accepted to attend the functions it organizes,” as well as a boycott of British products.

In mid-April 1935, working together with journalist Hamdi al-Husseini, Abdul Fattah Tuqan, Tawfiq al-Fahoum, Haj Said Kamal, and Shafiq Assal, Salah agreed to establish a new Palestinian national party. Salah and Tuqan jointly issued a statement in which they declared: “The present situation that the Palestinian people and their cause are living in has led some to consider forming a politically neutral bloc that would fulfill its duty within the national framework and would unite the front for the defense of the people's rights.” They called upon “all those who embrace this principle to take part with them in bringing this idea out of the realm of words and into the realm of actions.”

On 4 October 1935, the formation of the National Bloc party [al-Kutla al-Wataniyya] was announced, with Salah as president. In its manifesto, the party called for a focus on the youth in nationalist work, for joining the efforts of people all over the country into one single united front, and for greater support for women’s associations. The party’s bylaws stipulated that “anyone who has attained majority by being at least twenty years of age” was eligible for membership, “pledges, upon joining, not to squander the rights of the homeland in any way, especially by not selling land or by mediating the transfer of its ownership from an Arab to a non-Arab,” and “pledges to preserve and disseminate the party’s principles and to sever all ties with any other political party.” Furthermore, “young women and ladies who uphold the party’s tenets are to be registered as honorary members and supporters of the party.” The party’s political objectives were represented in its striving “to achieve complete political independence for Palestine and to safeguard its Arab identity by all political means,” to adopt “practical means that will lead to the revitalization of industry, agriculture, trade, and healthcare that will preserve offspring and increase the birthrate, and to promote scouting and sporting activity throughout the Arab areas [of Palestine],” and to use “all effective means to disseminate propaganda in both the Eastern and Western worlds, and to organize the publication of weekly news bulletins on the political and administrative situation [in Palestine] using all modern technical means.”

After the call for a general strike and the outbreak of the Great Palestinian Rebellion in mid-April 1936, Salah became the chairman of the local “national committee” formed in Nablus. On 18 April, he called for elections to be held to select members of the Palestinian delegation that could possibly travel to London to engage in talks with the British government. His proposal was to invite sixty prominent figures from the various political parties, along with an equal number of journalists and independents unaffiliated with any party, to nominate members to make up the delegation. This proposal clashed with the stance of Jamal al-Husseini, leader of the Palestine Arab Party [al-Hizb al-Arabi al-Filastini], who instead wanted to handpick the delegation members.

On 25 April 1936, Salah was chosen as a member of the Arab Higher Committee (lajna) for Palestine, which comprised the leaders of the six major Palestinian parties: the Palestine Arab Party, the National Defense Party [Hizb al-Difaʿ al-Watani], the Independence Party [al-Istiqlal], the National Bloc, the Reform Party [al-Islah], and the Arab Youth Congress [Muʾtamar al-Shabab al-Arabi]. Chaired by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the committee served as the leadership organ for the Palestinian nationalist movement.

After the British Mandate authorities imposed a monetary penalty on the city of Nablus for its participation in the general strike, a mass gathering was held at the city’s Great Mosque on 17 August 1936. At this gathering, Salah delivered a speech criticizing the British authorities for imposing this fine, in which he emphasized: “A nation that has taken a pledge unto itself to continue its noble, legitimate struggle for the sake of its righteous cause until it achieves its demands, will not be deterred from its resolve to strike by the imposition of fines or whatever other cruel punishments are imposed.”

On 15 January 1937, Salah testified before the British Royal Commission of Inquiry (the Peel Commission) in his capacity as a member of the Arab Higher Committee. In his testimony, he asserted that the main cause of the “disturbances” being witnessed in Palestine was “the sense of disappointment felt by the Arabs toward Britain over the hopes they had that the latter would help them gain their rights and their independence,” not to mention the Balfour Declaration, which made “us [the Arabs] doomed to let go of a part of the land of our fathers and forefathers into the hands an alien people.” The disturbances were also caused by “the government’s erroneous interpretation of the Mandate charter … [and] the charter [itself] being in violation of the League of Nations’ covenant.”

In October 1937, the British Mandate authorities announced a ban on the activities of the Arab Higher Committee and began a crackdown on its members. As a result, Salah fled to Egypt and then to Syria and Lebanon. On 14 October, the British High Commissioner issued a decree banning Salah from returning to Palestine.

Salah was eventually able to return to Palestine on 15 March 1940, after the Mandate authorities lifted the ban on his return. In the meantime, he had been selected as a member of the Arab Higher Committee’s delegation that travelled to attend the Round Table Conference held in London in February-March 1939 to discuss Palestine’s political future. In addition to Palestinian representatives, the Round Table was attended by representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, and Yemen. During the conference proceedings, the Arab representatives demanded an end to Jewish immigration, an end to the Mandate, and for Palestine’s independence to be guaranteed, with those Jews who were already living there to be granted minority rights.

Following the end of World War II, in autumn 1945, it was decided by representatives of the Palestinian political parties, including Salah, to reconstitute the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine, with the position of president to be left vacant. However, this committee was short-lived due to internal partisan disagreements. Then, in June 1946, the newly created League of Arab States decided to establish the Arab Higher Committee (hay’a), headed by Haj Amin al-Husseini, in which Salah did not participate.

After the Nakba of Palestine and the annexation of the West Bank of the Jordan River to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Salah was appointed in 1950 as a member of the second Jordanian Senate, or upper house of parliament, which, at the time, consisted of only twenty senior figures. Salah served in the Senate from 20 April 1950 until 30 May 1951. As a member, he participated in drafting the regulations and laws of the Hashemite Kingdom.

In 1950, Salah founded the Jordanian Bar Association, which was also active in the West Bank. He was elected as the association’s first president and served in this post from 25 November 1950 until 25 September 1952.

Salah passed away in Amman on 8 November 1952. His death was mourned by Jordanian and Palestinian figures, including the subsequent president of the Jordanian Bar Association, Shafiq Irsheidat, who said: “We mourn with deep sorrow the passing of Abd al-Latif Salah, one of the most eminent jurists and nationalist figures in the Arab world.” In honor of Salah’s memory, a street in the Jordanian capital Amman was named after him, and the Jordanian Bar Association created the Abd al-Latif Salah Medal, which is awarded to eminent figures in the field of law.

Abd al-Latif Salah was a prominent political activist and a key figure in the Palestinian nationalist movement during the British Mandate era. As a skilled lawyer, he came to be known as a defender of the rights of Palestinian Arabs to their land who resisted the attempts of Jewish settlers to lay their hands on it. Nationalist figure Omar al-Saleh al-Barghouti described Salah in his obituary in the newspaper Mir’at al-Sharq as “iron-willed, strong in character, a battle-hardened warrior, a tenacious, relentless adversary, generous in spirit, with an awe-inspiring, forceful personality.”

Selected Works

"شرح قانون المحاكمات الحقوقية". القدس: مطبعة دار الأيتام الإسلامية، 1924.

[Explaining Procedural Law on Personal Claims Cases]

"في المرآة: عبد اللطيف بك صلاح". "مرآة الشرق"، 1 أيلول 1927.

[Into the Mirror: Abd al-Latif Bek Salah]

"الأستاذ عبد اللطيف بك صلاح يحدثنا عن مدن الاستشفاء في فرنسا". "فلسطين"، 12 تشرين الأول 1932.

[Maître Abd al-Latif Bek Salah describes sanatoriums in France]

"سياسة اللاتعاون للأستاذ عبد اللطيف بك صلاح". "فلسطين"، 31 آب 1933.

[Advocate Abd al-Latif Bek Salah’s politics of non-cooperation]

"حديث عبد اللطيف صلاح عن الوفد [إلى لندن]". "الكرمل الجديد"، 18 نيسان 1936.

[Abd al-Latif Salah Speaks of the Delegation (to London)]

"في مسجد نابلس الكبير: فقرات من خطاب الاستاذ عبد الطيف صلاح بعد وضع الغرامة الكبرى على نابلس". "الجامعة الإسلامية"، 17 آب 1936.

[In the Great Mosque of Nablus: Excerpts from Advocate Abd al-Latif Salah’s address after the Imposition of a Major Financial Penalty on Nablus]

"أمام اللجنة الملكية: البيان المقدم من عبد اللطيف بك صلاح". "الجامعة الإسلامية" و"الدفاع" و "فلسطين" 19 كانون الثاني 1937.

[Before the Royal Commission: the Statement Delivered by Abd al-Latif Bek Salah]

Sources

Abdul Hadi, Mahdi, ed. Palestinian Personalities: A Biographic Dictionary. 2nd ed., rev. and updated. Jerusalem: Passia Publication, 2006.

الحوت، بيان نويهض. "القيادات والمؤسسات السياسية في فلسطين 1917- 1948". بيروت: مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية، 1981.

دروزة، محمد عزة. "مذكرات محمد عزة دروزة: سجل حافل بمسيرة الحركة العربية والقضية الفلسطينية خلال قرن من الزمن" (خمسة مجلدات). بيروت: دار الغرب الإسلامي، 1993.

عريق، "عبد اللطيف صلاح" (سياسي).

https://areq.net/m/عبد_اللطيف_صلاح_(سياسي).html

مركز الأبحاث الفلسطيني، "التنظيمات والأحزاب السياسية الفلسطينية قبل عام 1948: حزب الأهالي الفلسطيني؛ حزب الكتلة الوطنية"

https://www.prc.ps/التنظيمات-والأحزاب-السياسية-الفلسطي/

"الموسوعة الفلسطينية، القسم العام"، المجلد الثالث. دمشق: هيئة الموسوعة الفلسطينية، 1984.

نويهض، عجاج. "رجال من فلسطين". بيروت: منشورات فلسطين المحتلة، 1981.