Yusif Sayigh — economist and political activist

The life of Yusif Sayigh, Arab economist and political activist, spanned a turbulent era in the history of this region.

Born in Palestine in 1916 to a Palestinian mother and a Syrian father, and raised in two very different villages in both countries, Yusif witnessed the dramatic changes that took place from the closing years of the Ottoman Empire through the collapse of secular pan-Arab movements that once fuelled great expectations among idealistic young Arabs of his and successor generations.

Yusif, who died in 2004, was a practical optimist who believed planning, effective organisation and efficient implementation would secure Arab and Palestinian advancement in the political, economic, social and military fields.

In April 1989, his anthropologist wife, Rosemary, managed to convince Yusif, a constant traveller, to record tape cassettes of recollections when he was confined to bed after an operation.

She later edited the tapes into a memoir, “Yusif Sayigh: Arab Economist, Palestinian Patriot: A Fractured Life Story”, published by the American University Press in Cairo this year.

Throughout the book, she managed to preserve Yusif’s distinctive voice, his conversational asides, and even his tone of bitter disappointment when Arab, particularly Palestinian, leaders who were in great need of advice and strategic planning ignored his suggestions and efforts.

I met Yusif in 1961 through the UN Relief and Works Agency in Beirut where I was an intern. 

He invited me home for lunch where I was introduced to Rosemary and the two older children, Joumana and Yezid.

A year later I became Yusif’s assistant at the Economic Research Institute at the American University of Beirut (AUB) while I studied for a master’s degree. I was babysitting the children when Faris was born.

The 1960s were an exciting time for the Arabs.

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was trying to reform his country’s economy and raise the living standards of the poor.

Like Egypt, Iraq had become a republic and was ruled by the pro-Nasser Aref brothers.

Syria stumbled from one coup to another. Lebanon was a hub of intellectual and political activity, as well as the regional playground. 

Economists spoke of an Arab economic “take off”. Association with the Economic Research Institute was exciting and forward looking.

Yusif and Rosemary dwelt in a spacious roof flat with a view in West Beirut. This was a far cry from the sparsely furnished rooms in the dusty, desolate Syrian Christian village of Kharaba, near Deraa, where the Sayigh family moved after Yusif’s birth in Al Basa, near Acre, in Palestine.

For Yusif, the eldest child, Kharaba, a town with no modern amenities where his father was a Protestant preacher, was a nightmare.

Yusif used to say he would sit on a step near the gate of his house and cry when the wind blew at nightfall.

The family was forced to flee in 1925 when neighbouring Druze threatened the Christians who were suspected of pro-French sympathies and burned Abu Yusif’s church.

For Yusif, nine at the time, Al Basa was a dream come true, a well-off hill village with a view to the Mediterranean where he and his brothers — Fayez, Fuad, Munir, Twefiq and Anis — often swam.

Surrounded by fruit trees and vegetable gardens, the village boasted cobblers, plumbers, a tinsmith and coffee shops.

The Christian and Muslim villagers were cheerful and liberal. The Sayighs’ life was filled with “prayers and picnics”.

Yusif left at 13 to attend school in Sidon and higher studies at AUB.

As a youth, he joined the Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) and spent a great deal of time with its founder, Antun Saadeh. Yusif remained loyal to the party even after he became disillusioned with the authoritarian Saadeh who strove for Greater Syria (comprising Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Cyprus) rather than the Arab unification Yusif believed was essential for the survival of Palestine.

In 1930, the Sayighs moved into a better house in Tiberias, a town with a Jewish majority.

After taking a business degree, Yusif taught for a year in Tikrit (1939-40) where he again witnessed poverty, privation and deep social conservatism.

It was an interesting time to be in Iraq, which was in nationalist ferment in the months before the failed Rashid Ali revolt against the British.

Yusif returned to Palestine after his mother had a heart attack. He worked in Tiberias at the spa and the Tiberias Hotel, hoarding his earnings to help educate his brothers and sister Mary.

Between 1944-48, he lived in Jerusalem, working first in business and later as the director of the Arab National Treasury, which raised funds for the Palestinians’ defence of their land in the long war fought over his people’s existence.

Yusif and his colleagues worked out how much people should pay. 

Every Palestinian, rich or poor, was asked to contribute one shilling a year while different levels of society were taxed on their ability to pay.

Yusif travelled around Palestine speaking to his countrymen and women, and organised the collection of shillings through grocery shops until it became too dangerous to roam the country.

He met the mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini in 1946 while he was living in Cairo. Yusif presented a paper and talked to him at length about the importance of organisation and arming young Palestinians to resist the Zionists.

Yusif found, however, that the mufti was so convinced that the “purity” of the Palestinian cause “was enough in itself, to the point he did not build a fighting force in the modern sense… to face the situation” and depended on villagers to battle the enemy.

Between late 1946 and May 1948, Yusif dwelled in the West Jerusalem quarter of Qatamoun where he was captured and held in Israeli prisoner-of-war camps for a year before being expelled to Jordan-controlled East Jerusalem.

While a member of the Palestine National Council in the late 1960s, Yusif urged the armed resistance to unify and organise, the very message he had conveyed to the mufti 20 years earlier.

Yusif convinced the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to establish a centre to draw up plans on military, financial, political and other issues, completed a comprehensive plan and submitted it to the PLO leadership, which ignored it.

He resigned, but constantly pressed Yasser Arafat over the PLO’s lack of planning, transparency and accountability, attributes the Palestinian Authority still lacks.

In 1988, after the Palestinian declaration of independence, Yusif was asked to prepare a study on the economic framework of a state and after the 1993 Oslo accord, he drafted the development plan used to secure funds from the World Bank.

He asked that an independent body control the money, but this was rejected by Arafat, who wanted to have full control of all funds flowing into Palestine.

The World Bank agreed with Yusif and Arafat permitted the creation of an oversight body which he sabotaged with the collusion of donors who did not want to alienate the Palestinian leader.

The final chapter of the book deals with Yusif’s work as an Arab economist beginning with his 1961 book, “Bread with Dignity”, which argued that economic, social and political factors determine development that depended on “transformation within all sectors of society and government”.

This idea, largely ignored for half a century by Arab governments, remains as revolutionary today as it was then, and was taken up in 2011 by Egyptian revolutionaries in Tahrir Square when they demanded “bread, dignity and social justice”.

The 18 heady days of the Egyptian uprising would have rekindled Yusif’s optimism even though the Arab Spring produced four years of conflict across the region.