Al-Ittihad (Israeli newspaper)
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| Type | Daily |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Maki |
| Editor | Aida Touma-Suleiman |
| Founded | 1944 |
| Political alignment | Communist |
| Language | Arabic |
| Headquarters | Haifa, Israel |
| Country | Israel |
| Website |
www.aljabha.org (Hadash website) |
Al-Ittihad (Arabic: الاتحاد, lit. The Union) is an Israeli Arabic-language daily newspaper based in Haifa and established in 1944 during Mandatory Palestine. The newspaper is the oldest Arab media outlet in Israel and is considered the most important, it is owned by Maki, the Israeli Communist Party. It is currently edited by Aida Touma-Suleiman.
The paper was established in 1944 by Emile Toma, Fu'ad Nassar and Emile Habibi. Its first edition was published on 14 May that year. Habibi edited the paper until 1989. The newspaper functioned as an organ for the National Liberation League in Palestine. From September 1945 onwards it was published in the name of the Arab Workers' Congress. The newspaper was shut down by the British authorities in February 1948, reappearing on 18 October. In July members of the NLL in Haifa contacted the Mapam party, asking them to pressure Israeli authorities to give a license to resume publishing the newspaper.Al-Ittihad was the only pre-state Arabic-language paper to continue being published after independence. In 1948 it moved into a new building on Al-Hariri Road. In the years after independence when Israeli Arabs were subject to military government, the paper was banned in some areas. It was later banned in the West Bank.
In 1953 Al-Ittihad and its Hebrew sister newspaper, Kol HaAm, published a controversial article on the Korean War, which resulted in the Minister of Internal Affairs, Israel Rokach, ordering both papers to close for 15 days. The papers filed a petition to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the suspension had been wrongly issued and should be set aside. The ruling utilised the Declaration of Independence in making its judgment on the issue of free speech, the first time the declaration had been used as an instrument for interpretation.
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