al-Isa Family

Prominent Palestinian family from Jaffa.

A Greek Orthodox family of landowners, businessmen, and politicians, the al-Isas became most known in the twentieth century as publishers of the long-lived newspaper Filastin. Brothers Yusuf and Isa Daʾud Isa, who both attended the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, founded the newspaper in 1911. Leaders of the Nahda al-Urthuduksiyya (Orthodox Renaissance) before World War I, they were also active in the anti-Zionist movement. Isa's son Raja became editor of Filastin in 1951 and of the Jerusalem Star in the 1960s. He is now a publisher and owner of the Jordan Distribution Agency in Amman, Jordan. Another member of the family, Michel al-Isa, headed a battalion in defense of Jaffa against the Israelis in the 1948 Arab - Israel War.

A second prominent branch of the al-Isa family is based in Beirut, Lebanon. Elias al-Isa was a wealthy contractor in the early twentieth century from Bsous. His son Emile is a retired banker, and his son Raymond is an architect and engineer.

Bibliography

Khalaf, Issa. Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Dis-integration, 1939 - 1948. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.

Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict, 1882 - 1914, revised edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

— ELIZABETH THOMPSON