Yusif Sayigh

Yusif Sayigh (1916–2004) was a Palestinian economist, academic and politician. He was an Arab nationalist and is known for his academic and practical activities on economic development of Arabs.

Early life and education Yusif Sayigh was born in al-Bassa, northern Palestine, in 1916. He was the eldest of Abdullah Sayigh and Afifa Batruni's six sons, including Fayez Sayigh, Anis Sayigh and Tawfiq Sayigh.

Sayigh went to Sidon at age 13 for high school education and obtained a degree in business administration from American University of Beirut in 1938. During the Arab revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939 he began to take part in political activities boycotting the shops run by the Jews and wearing the fez as a symbol of nationalist resistance. During his university studies he joined the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) led by Antoun Saadeh. Sayigh went to the US for the doctorate studies in 1954 when he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1957 obtaining a PhD . His PhD thesis was entitled Entrepreneurship and development: Private, public and joint entreprise in underdeveloped countries.

At the end of World War II Sayigh involved in the activities to raise funds to buy lands in Palestine to block the Jewish settlement. He was arrested during the 1948 Palestine war, jailed in the Ijlil labor camp and released in 1949.

Sayigh was elected as a member of the Palestinian National Council in 1966. He also served as the treasurer of the PLO's National Fund from 1971 to 1974 Some of his books included The Economies of the Arab World (1978), The Arab Economy (1982) and Arab Oil Policies (1983).

Sayigh also wrote a comprehensive report for the PLO entitled The Programme for Development of the Palestinian National Economy 1994–2000 in collaboration with the Palestinian experts.

Views Sayigh was an advocate of the heterodox economics based on the public goods and social justice.

For Sayigh the first intifada of Palestinians in 1988 contributed to the global understanding of their struggle for national self-determination and expanded the support for an independent Palestinian state.

Personal life and death Sayigh was married to scholar Rosemary Sayigh. They met in Beirut and wed at the National Evangelical Church in Beirut on 7 October 1953. They had three children: Joumana, Yezid and Faris. Yezid Sayigh is an academic.

Yusif Sayigh died in Beirut in 2004.

Awards Sayigh was the recipient of the prize of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research in 1981 and of the Abdullah Tariki Award in 2000.